


The Disappeared

by fringe_element



Category: Better Call Saul (TV), Breaking Bad
Genre: AU - Deviates at Granite State, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Lots of Other Mentions, Mindfuck, Poisoning, Psycho!Walt, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-05-13 04:15:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 57,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5694370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fringe_element/pseuds/fringe_element
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During “Granite State” Walt and Saul are sequestered at the extractor's. When it comes time for Saul to leave for his new life in Nebraska, Walt declares, “Change of plans. He’s coming with me.” This fic follows that thread, exploring what would have happened had Walt and Saul disappeared together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Defiant Ones

Saul, Wednesday Afternoon, Day 1   
I was vanishing into thin air. The life that I had so meticulously crafted was disintegrating all around me. It was like I’d pulled out a piece on a Jenga puzzle and lost. Time to create a new identity.

The man who was gonna change my life picked me up in an old van. It was pretty anti-climatic; I guess I was expecting to be swept away by the Bat Mobile, or something deep undercover, like a garbage truck. No, my life was gonna be changed by a man in a maroon Toyota. And the guy driving the van, that was Ed, the extractor himself. I thought he’d have a vast network of associates, like the Underground Railroad, but apparently, this guy ran a streamlined operation. 

He wasn’t a tough guy like I expected, but a guy with a greying crewcut who looked like a grandpa or, at the most, like a retired private eye. I didn’t care because I was so fucking relieved to step into that van. 

I hustled my bags into the back and took a seat. I breathed in deep but my breath got caught on an overpowering old car odor that smelled vaguely of dog. 

I smiled, looking out the window as my last glances of Albuquerque whisked by. No more Walter White, no Jesse Pinkman, no more lunatic drug dealers, or DEA agents crawling up my ass. But I had no delusions. I knew I was walking away from life as I knew it. But life as I knew it had been reduced to representing these terrible men who’d do anything for their own survival. All my attachments had withered away. The hiss of death had become so loud _I’d_ do almost anything to survive. _Almost_ anything.

Ed took me to a vacuum cleaner repair shop. He actually dealt in vacuum cleaners—the nerve of this guy. No metaphors in his repertoire. I allowed myself a brief chuckle, but then I thought about Walt. He’d be using the extractor too, and if luck prevailed, we would _not_ overlap.

“So, how’s Walt?” I ventured, to see where the landscape laid.

“See for yourself,” Ed said, pointing to a video surveillance monitor. My heart paused for a moment. The monitor showed a sterile room with a little window, a couple of cots, and an agitated Walter White pacing around like a baboon. I felt a sucking sensation pulling me deep back in to my old world. I took a Xanax.

The extractor said Walt and I would be bunkmates for a couple of days. Ed didn’t have to remind me, but he reminded me anyway, that my case was made more difficult by my saturation ad campaign. That made me think—turn off the TV ads—but on second thought no, I was disappearing into thin air. A dead man doesn’t cancel advertising.

Ed took me down to the safe room, which had a stale, unpleasant air, like a locker room. Walt wasn’t surprised to see me and seemed to not care one way or another about my presence. He railed on and on, mostly about Jack Welker and how Welker took his “life’s work.” They were the ravings of a thwarted tyrant. I wondered if Walt had lost it. Well, let’s face it, Walt had been losing it right along, but maybe now he had slipped into some dark place where no form of reason could reach him. 

I felt a little sorry for him, and then I felt angry at myself for having compassion for this mad man. If there was someone to blame for my life falling apart, it would have to be Walt. I mean, he kidnapped me at gunpoint to get me to do his bidding in the first place. And now here we were, fugitives, imprisoned in this ‘safe room’ together. I vowed to keep my head down and to not engage him.

That first day we both pretty much kept quiet. It was hard for me to remain silent, but I wasn’t crazy enough to venture into the maelstrom that was Walter White without provocation. 

Walt, Wednesday Afternoon, Day 1  
I was mulling over my revenge options when the door to the basement opened and in walked Saul Goodman, all mousy and paranoid.

He brought matching blue suitcases with him, an electric, sissy blue. I had to assume one of those bags, probably the smallest, was filled with money—the children of _my_ genius.

I barely acknowledged him. He reeked of weakness. He still had the bruises on his face from where Jesse beat him. What was _he_ running from? He wasn’t suspected of killing anyone. What’s the worst thing he’d done? Aiding and abetting? Money laundering? He’d throw his life away for that?

I was too busy for commiserating. I had too much to do and no tools with which to do it. Priority One: exact revenge on Jack Welker… get my money back and kill the thieving son-of-a-bitch. Priority Two: get the money to my family. Priority Three: tie-up loose ends. 

I started to make a list of things I’d need from Ed. First item: throw-away smart phone to follow breaking news. Second item: newspaper. Ed had taken my phone, said he didn’t want me to make any accidental calls or to, God forbid, answer the phone—like calling has become some kind of animal reflex. 

The worst part of being disappeared was that I couldn’t reach out to Skyler or Junior. What must they think? That I killed Hank, that’s what. Would they really think I was capable of that? Maybe they’d read about the SUV perforated with hundreds of bullets and realize how heroically I acted. That I was almost killed and that I tried to _save_ Hank. My own brother-in-law. How could they think differently? Because the DEA would lie to Skyler, that’s how. They’d tell her that I’d masterminded Hank’s murder, just like I’d planned and executed everything else. Who was she going to believe? The DEA or her ‘disappeared’ husband? Hell, maybe she thought I was dead. Guilty and dead.

Saul, Thursday Morning, Day 2  
On the second day he spoke, and as I suspected, I liked silent Walt much better. He asked me to list five hit men, like I was some kind of directory assistance operator for the criminally insane. I tried to explain that I didn’t know any hit men, but Walt didn’t care about reality. He thought I could reconstruct my chain of contacts out of thin air. 

I got out of it through sleight of hand… talking my way out, like I manage most problems. I changed the topic and focused on Skyler and how he should do the right thing by her. My suggestion was radical: Walt should stay and take responsibility. 

We were discussing the more subtle points of RICO seizure laws, moving large sums of illegal money, and familial responsibilities when Ed opened the door and announced that I was ready to go. A wave of relief passed over me, I felt the tension going out of almost every one of my muscles. But the feeling lasted precisely one nanosecond because Walt was saying something…

“Change of plans. He’s coming with me,” Walt told Ed.

I was bombarded by a dump of adrenalin that put my whole system on red alert. I protested pathetically, “No. No, that’s not…”

“We’re going together. I can use him,” Walt was saying. _What the fuck?_

Ed said he would give us a minute to discuss and he left me alone with Walt. I tried to explain to Walt that I wasn’t a lawyer anymore. Subtext: I was done being _used_ by egomaniacal drug lords. 

But Walt kept backing me up, right into the wall. Literally. _Here comes an ass-kicking,_ I thought. But the cancer had him back in its grip and it seized him with a coughing attack. The spittle rattled in his chest and he fell to the cot, fighting for air. I heard Ed open the door and I thought, _Freedom beckons_. 

“It’s over,” I told Walt, self-satisfied that I had stood my ground, metaphorically anyway. I grabbed my bags and started up the steps only to be met by the muzzle of a gun. Again. Twice in one week. Ed looked regretful, but he always looked kind of sad. Maybe it was his line of work.

“Don’t do this…” I stammered.

“Sorry, counselor,” Ed said. I heard Walt behind me and turned to see him holding the wand of a vacuum cleaner. It seemed incongruous until he revealed its purpose by swinging the wand at me. He caught me in the knee, and I did a Humpty Dumpty down the stairs, suitcases and all. 

Next thing I knew they were digging me out of a tangle of luggage and spilled clothes. Ed helped Walt toss me on the cot and then Walt used handcuffs to fetter me to the metal frame.   
I was having some difficulty processing what had just happened. Clearly, Walt had bought off Ed. It was painful, seeing as Ed was “my guy” and everything. But Walt had more buying power than me, an oil barrel full versus a tote bag. And Walt was mean, a sadistic fuck; he must have remembered me saying I have bad knees on that night out in the desert when he and Jesse threatened to toss me in a grave. Why can’t I keep my mouth shut? 

“Walt, what the fuck?” I found my voice, but it was weak and trembly, giving away my sheer terror.

“I told you, Saul, it’s not over until I say it is,” he said, his voice filled with rancor. 

“You expect me to cooperate with you?” I protested, though I had a feeling he had this all figured out. “Let me stay here, then. I can do more good as your lawyer if I don’t run.” The pain from the knee was radiating up and down my leg, sending my muscles into spasm.

Walt approached my cot. I tried to shrink away. He held two photographs about five inches from my face. One was Chuck and the other Kim. Chuck, I had mixed feelings about. But Kim... “What do you want from me?” I asked, my voice breaking.

Walt, Thursday Afternoon  
I started to realize Saul might be useful after all. I figured he could be a sort of assistant to me while on the lam since I’d be under deep cover, unable to show my face. His disappearance wasn’t going to attract the same publicity as mine. He could be out and about. He could be my errand boy in addition to providing the occasional legal advice.   
In the sobering dank of Ed’s cellar, Saul seemed to be calming down, sloughing off his Goodman character. His over-the-top posturing and manic energy were dissipating. For the first time ever he wore a normal shirt, white with simple vertical stripes. Who knew he had that in his wardrobe? Did he go out and buy special clothes for disappearing? Probably. In any event, I sort of liked this new Saul that was emerging in captivity.

But apparently Saul didn’t have the same vision for the fugitive life as I did, claimed he was no longer a lawyer! Ha. He had balked on supplying the names of hit men and I could see that he wasn’t going to cooperate without incentive. I had gone upstairs on the pretext of doing paperwork for my new identity. Instead, I set about lining up some things to ensure the continued services of my counsel. 

I got in touch with one of Saul’s men, Patrick Kuby. It turned out that his loyalty was to the highest bidder. Plus it helped that Kuby was pissed at Saul, who’d disappeared without settling up with the henchman. 

Kuby did some research on the important people in Saul’s life. At first, we thought we were going to have to use that bitch, Francesca. But Kuby was able to unearth a disabled brother and a surprisingly fetching ex-girlfriend. It was easy enough for him to take a candid photo of the ex getting into her car.

The brother, however, was a shut-in and proved to be a more difficult photographic subject. Kuby ended up posing as a meter reader and knocked on his door. That photo was priceless: the brother flinching at having his picture taken. When I showed Saul the pictures, I had to reassure him that I hadn’t _already_ hurt his brother. 

The photos accomplished their purpose. Well, the photos combined with a little bit of intimidation. Mind you, I’m not violent by nature, but sometimes you have to resort to it to accomplish your goals. Saul’s a squirrelly one, and he needed a little convincing.

I’d hit him in the knee to ensure his cooperation. That, and I was a little mad at him. What kind of lawyer gives up on his client in his time of need? If Saul tried to run, that knee would slow him down. 

But I still worried that my hold on Saul was tenuous. He could see the difficulty I was having in putting together a hit on the Welker crew, that my efforts were dependent upon his contacts. I wasn’t exactly building credibility. He had to wonder how much of a serious threat I could be to his brother and his ex-girlfriend.

Saul, Saturday, Day 4  
I was surprised at how quickly Ed lined up new identities for Walt and me now that we were disappearing together. I suspect he must have been working on these identities even before the whole vacuum cleaner wand incident. Ed came into the safe room and declared, “You’re going to Minneapolis. You’ll be brothers. Frank,” he nodded at Walt, “and Paul Dobbs.” 

“Whoa, wait. Saul/Paul? Is that some kind of biblical humor?” I asked. “Because it’s not funny.”

Ed paused and considered me. I don’t think he usually had to spend so much time with his customers. “I don’t make these names up. Believe me. I had to search long and hard for the same two surnames. Maybe think of this as your conversion: Saul becomes Paul…”

“Well, the Jewish thing was getting old…”

“You’re not Jewish?” Ed asked.

Snap. I’d stepped in it. 

Ed wanted us to start using the names right away. It would jeopardize the cause if someone heard us calling each other ‘Walt’ and ‘Saul.’ Neither one of us had an on-the-down-low kind of name like, say, ‘John.’ Especially me. There had to be, what, five ‘Sauls’ in all of New Mexico? And Minneapolis wasn’t going to be much better. 

Ed also wanted us to grow beards; Walt was to fill his out and I was to grow a full beard. I hate facial hair. And _Ed_ was going to give me a _hair cut_. Goodbye comb-over. I wondered if getting my hair cut would tarnish my creative abilities.

Walt, Saturday  
The photographs proved sufficient motivation for Saul to come through with the name of a middle man: ’Simon’. Ed brought me Saul’s cell phone and I perused the contact list, but all he had in there was a list of movies and TV shows. 

“What is this, Saul? Your pathetic attempt at coding your phone numbers? Where’s your decoder ring? What’s the secret code for Simon?”   
His tongue was playing with a tooth causing his mouth to fall open like an idiot. It was his nervous tick. I could tell I was pushing him, but I didn’t want to take it too far. It would be so easy to break him. “The Day of the Jackal,” he answered. I wrote down the number, then out of curiosity looked for my old phone number.

“Dr. Strangelove? A bit obvious, isn’t it?” I remarked.

I couldn’t resist messing with him. I hit send and handed the phone back. He reacted like it was a hot potato, desperately fumbling for the end call button.

“Nice job, Walt. You just established in the phone record that I tried to contact you. Makes you look alive.”

“No. It makes _you_ look alive and wondering where I am.” 

Saul, Saturday Night  
Walt had this crazy plan. He wanted to eliminate Jack Welker and his neo-Nazis and he wanted _me_ to make the arrangements. I was to call my middle man (AKA the guy who knows a guy) and put together a meet to make a down payment and provide intelligence about the operation. While I had used Simon’s services plenty of times over the years, clients had always handled making the contact with Simon themselves. I was a complete novice at setting up a hit.

Ed would drive me to the meet with Simon, but that’s it. Apparently there are limits to his involvement. Like he’s not going to get out of the car when there are guns about.   
I would not be carrying; Walt wasn’t about to trust me with a gun. Hell, he only begrudgingly agreed to get me a crutch, and he knew full well I could barely walk without it.

On the way to the meet, I asked Ed “What’s he paying you…. I’ll double it.” Damn if I wasn’t going to take every opportunity to get the hell away. 

“He’s paying me with your money,” Ed said in that emotionless way of his.

“Aw, fuck,” I hung my head, defeated.

“I have to give Walt a full report. Best if you don’t ask too many questions.” Ed had drunk the Kool-aid. I could remind him about all the business I’d floated his way over the years, but somehow it didn’t seem like loyalty was a big motivator for him. And, obviously, my frequent flyer status was now coming to an end.

Ed stopped on the street near the alley where I was meeting Simon.

“Uh, dya think you could get a little closer?” I asked, pointing to the crutch.

“Sorry. I’m keeping my distance.” I gave Ed a disgusted look and scrambled out of the van inelegantly. By the time I was a quarter of the way down the alley I had worked up a sweat in spite of the crisp fall night.

Simon stepped out from behind a dumpster. I’d always assumed he was kind of impish because, well, he was British and also because he always seemed kind of nervous on the phone. He wasn’t tall, maybe 5’10”, but he was built. Definitely not an imp.

“Bloody hell, Saul, you’re a cripple?” Simon greeted me.

“Just temporarily. I twisted my knee.” 

Simon kept scanning the alley. “Let’s go with the money.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, putting on my tough guy voice. “Change of plans… I give you the money and all you have to do is get me out of here.”

“What?”

“I’m being held against my will. I need a ride out of here. I’ll give you all the money, just for that.” Involuntarily, my register came up.

Simon chuckled. “$100,000? To help you escape? From whom?” Just then, Ed’s van appeared at the end of the alley, hovering there. Simon pulled out a gun and in one seamless motion he grabbed me from behind and held the gun to my temple. 

“A simpler plan would be: I just take the money.” The crutch had slipped away and I was still upright only with Simon’s unwitting assistance.

I raised my hands to show my defenselessness, hoping this guy had a sense of mercy. “The money, Saul,” he said. 

I was carrying the money in a fanny pack, turned around so the pouch was at my stomach. I reached for it but Simon pushed me down. I tried to break my fall without bending my knee, causing my wrist to jam. Simon liberated the fanny pack then he kicked me in the stomach. _Now_ Ed decides to drive into the alley.

I scrambled to my feet. “He took the money! We have to catch him!”

Ed had climbed out of the van to help me get in. “What the hell happened?” Ed asked. 

“He’s not gonna hire the hit man! He jumped me!” 

“He stole the money?”

“Yes!”

 

Ed took me down to the bunker like he was taking me to the lions. He left me alone with Walt who was pacing as if already knew something went wrong. 

“It was a set up,” I said, my voice sounding desperate, almost pleading. Walt stopped dead and gave me the stink eye. Now, surely, here would come an ass-kicking. But Walt started coughing instead. I made note: the coughing would overtake him whenever he got upset. Useful information. 

“The cancer is back?” I asked, sounding more sympathetic than I intended to. Walt just gave me a steely stare.

I headed toward the sanctuary of my cot. My whole world had been reduced to a lumpy two inch mattress on top of a creaky, jabbing, metal frame. I laid down and offered him my right hand for the handcuff, but withheld the left. “Just the one hand, please. I think this might be broken.” I showed him my left wrist as if he cared.

“Jesus, Saul, what happened?” I looked into Walt’s eyes and saw a softness there, the same sympathy that I heard in his voice.

“There were two of them and they had guns. They jumped me and took the money.” Walt put his hands up to his head. I glanced surreptitiously up at the camera, as if it could let me see whether or not Ed was watching.

“So, no hit?” Walt asked. 

I shook my head no, averting my gaze, scared of what might happen next.

Walt picked up the house phone and called up Ed. “Can we get a couple of ice packs down here?”

Walt, Saturday Night  
Ed and Saul were gone for about an hour. A reasonable amount of time, but I got antsy anyway. I envisioned all the scenarios of how things could go wrong. When I saw Saul, I knew that they had.

He was roughed up, and his crutch had scuffs on it—scratches from the asphalt. So, I knew he wasn’t faking, or if he was faking, it was a masterful job. He had a terrified look in his eyes, like a cornered animal. He explained to me what happened, but he didn’t need to. He got overpowered by an opportunistic middle man. What did I expect?

I wasn’t as upset about the money as I was the lost contact. Now how was I going to find a hit man? I’d have to come up with another plan.


	2. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a minor adjustment to Chapter One -- just changed the days of the week.

Saul, Sunday Morning, Day 5  
It was time for us to pull up stakes in Albuquerque. Walt wasn’t giving up on taking down Jack Welker. He just somehow thought it would be easy enough to do from Minneapolis. Didn’t make much sense to me, since it had proved impossible to get done in Albuquerque. But I wasn’t complaining. I was relieved to get out of the Land of Endangerment. Living under Walt’s thumb was possibly better than facing the justice system. I don’t know; it was debatable. 

Ed had come up with a Chevy pick-up truck with a cap and California plates. He and Walt loaded up the back seat with our belongings, my matching suitcases which now seemed overly domestic and Walt’s motley collection. Ed outfitted the back with an air mattress, a couple of sleeping bags, and a cooler with sandwiches and drinks. Walt and Ed had transferred the money into blue plastic bins—a lot less conspicuous than the barrel. They lined the back end of the truck bed with the bins. The truck was a mammoth, with an extended bed, but even so the money monopolized a good portion of the truck bed and I couldn’t lie down full-length. My knee was a little better now but it was going to be one hell of a long 18 hours. 

I used to love road trips. There was the inevitable mix tape that someone made just for that trip. The junk food and pops and Gatorade followed by beer at the hotel. The changing of the scenery. And the conversation. People go the damnedest places when confined in a small space for hours. But I had already experienced confinement with Walt for a couple days and he had said little other than to complain about the people who’d wronged him and discuss how he was going to wreak revenge. I often wondered if he thought I’d wronged him and I figured he did and my captivity was part of his revenge plot for me.

Ed didn’t want either one of us to get out of the truck. For the whole 18 hours. But he gave us baseball caps and sunglasses just in case—a chance to see Walt in his D.B. Cooper get up again! I was reduced to finding joy in the smallest pleasures.

The cap had black-out windows, so we were able to get some idea of the passing scenery. By the time we got to Texas, it was already getting less desert-y. After all my heart-stopping desert escapades, I wasn’t sad to see it go. It was hard, on the other hand, to let go of Saul Goodman. I had found my pace with him: the ultimate con game. But by playing Saul, I had alienated my only friend in Albuquerque—Kim—and now my every move put her risk. I didn’t know how serious Walt’s threats were. His main resource, his only resource, was his money. But that was a formidable weapon. Who did he have helping him? Who took the pictures? Dwelling on Albuquerque was too painful…

My thoughts turned to Minneapolis. What did I know about Minnesota? My family had taken some vacations in Wisconsin when I was a kid. Minnesota was pretty similar, right? The trees and lakes and funny accents. I thought I could do that accent, help me fit in better.

I would have to get a job; it would look too suspicious if I didn’t. And I wasn’t that hot—the Heisenberg lawyer was all. I didn’t rate a headshot on CNN, thank God. Walt, on the other hand, couldn’t leave the house.

“When we get to Minneapolis…” I started to say.

“White Bear Lake,” Ed interrupted me, yelling over the highway sounds.

“Huh?” I asked, turning my head to hear him better through the pass through.

“White Bear Lake, it’s a little town, a suburb, or exurb, of Minneapolis, or more accurately, St. Paul. You’ll be living in White Bear Lake. In a little house on a quiet lane.” Walt didn’t seem to be listening to any of this.

“Walt…”

“Frank!” Ed interrupted again.

“Frank,” I said awkwardly, “when we get to White Bear Lake, you’re going to be a shut-in right?”

Walt gave me a pained look, like he hadn’t thought about it, or like he’d been thinking about it too much. “Yeah,” he said tentatively, leery of what was coming next.

“I was thinking about it. We could say that you have electromagnetic hypersensitivity.”

“That’s a phantom condition. Do you want to make out to be a lunatic?”

“No! This is not a commentary on _your_ mental stability. It’s your character, right? You’re playing a character. It would explain why you couldn’t come outside. All I’d have to do is buy certain things. Like ice, I’d have to get ice everyday.”

“Is this what’s wrong with your brother?”

“Yeah.”

“And you believe him?”

“I know the disease might not be real, but _he_ believes it. It’s completely debilitating.”

“Do you want to _debilitate_ me, Saul?” Walt squinted menacingly. I glanced up into the rearview and caught Ed’s eyes. He was listening, but he wasn’t about to correct Walt’s usage of my name.

“No, I’m just trying to come up with a good cover. If we’re going to make this work.”

“Sorry, you’re right,” Walt was waving his hands around. “Your idea has merit. And it makes more sense for the brothers to live together if one was ill.”

Should I have lived with Chuck to help him out? If I had, he would have figured that I was just being free-loader.

 

We rode in silence for another hour or so. The lack of conversation was driving me crazy. For one thing, I needed to know where Walt’s head was at. And I was bored out of my mind, so much so that I was contemplating suggesting we play the license plate game. Instead I tried to strike up a conversation.

“So how did you meet Skyler? If you don’t mind me asking.”

There was a long pause, making me wonder if I’d overstepped some sacred boundary.

“Skyler worked at a diner while she was studying accounting. I used to go to lunch there when I was at Los Alamos.”

“Wow, you were at Los Alamos? Why’d you leave?”

“Small minds. I used to come into that diner so _frustrated_ by the petty jealousies, the inane bureaucracy at the lab. Skyler would see my frustration and she would make me laugh. When it was my birthday she celebrated by writing out my age in bacon. She helped me survive Los Alamos.”

“A bacon writer, huh?” It was a surprisingly quaint story, the part about Skyler anyway. I could imagine the falling out at Los Alamos; Walt doesn’t seem the type to take direction.

“What about you and Kim?” Walt asked. I considered him carefully. Was it genuine curiosity or was he looking for ammunition? Walt and I were friends once, yes? Could we still be? Is that at least part of the reason he wants me to come along with him? I didn’t want to get his hackles up, but I wasn’t putting Kim in anymore danger despite the risks to me.

“We’re not going to go there. Frank.”

I got a steely stare from Walt. We were sitting next to each other, our backs against the wall of the cab, my left hand innocently resting between us. I had decided it wasn’t broken, but it sure had a nasty sprain. Walt looked down and stared at that hand—his evil eye made the wrist hurt and I cradled it with my right hand and re-adjusted my knee, which had become cramped with tension.

Walt reached over and cupping the back of my head pulled me toward him. It was an odd gesture, more gentle than violent. But then, in an icy voice he said, “When I ask a question, _Saul_ , I expect an answer.” He pushed my head back, ruffling my hair a bit like I was his little brother.

“Kim and I worked at the same law firm when I was first getting started,” I explained, my voice cracking. “We both started in the mailroom. I guess I wooed her with my sense of humor and charm. It didn’t last.”

“She’s a beautiful woman,” Walt commented, as if to say ‘of course it didn’t last.’ “You’ve remained friends?”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t about to tell Walt how much I cherished Kim. How she reminded me of the best of Jimmy McGill. Because of her, I kept a little piece of Jimmy’s innocence and genuineness alive—that guy who sincerely tried when practicing elder law, who could connect with clients like he truly cared. I hadn’t spoken to Kim much in the last couple of years. I know she didn’t approve of Saul Goodman. There was the frosty phone call after the ads first went up. “I laughed my head off,” she told me, “until I realized you were being serious.”

 

Outside of Wichita, Ed reported that he was too tired to be driving in the megatropolis’ rush hour. Walt looked at me long and hard, and announced “Sa… Paul will drive.” I was about to protest. I didn’t see how my knee could take it. But there would be other advantages, like a sense of freedom, no matter how illusory. Ed protested for me. “He can’t do it with his knee—it’s the right knee, yes? It’s just a bad idea. You guys need to keep a low profile, how can I make you understand that? Let’s give it ninety minutes so that I can rest up and the traffic can settle down.”

“We need to make good time. Put New Mexico as far at our backs as possible and as fast as possible. Paul will drive. Take the next small turn-off. No gas stations, just wheat. You’ll switch places there.” 

The driver’s seat in the truck’s cab sat up high which was a godsend. My legs weren’t cramped like in a sedan where you sit on the floor. I’d be able to reposition my leg. I could even use the cruise control and straighten the leg.

A couple hours into driving I spotted a state trooper way in the back of a pack of cars. He appeared to have the light bar across the roof of his car, but it was too distant to see for sure. And one of those black bumpers for ramming things. He captivated my attention. For twenty minutes I was sensitive to every lane change, every turn of the head. He crept closer. It was definitely a cop. I wondered if I should mention this development to Ed, who was scrunched up trying to sleep in the back. Or, I could intentionally get us pulled over, but what would that accomplish? 

“We’ve got company,” Walt announced. He was keeping a vigil on the traffic. Walt held the gun up so that I could see it in the mirror. “Just keep it steady, right at the speed limit. Any funny business and I blow your head off. I’d rather die in a pile of twisted metal than face the electric chair.” I was glad he clarified his position on the merits of blowing off my head. Keeping my head intact and out of jail seemed worthy causes. I checked that the cruise control was on 65 miles per hour and kept the truck dead center in the lane. The trooper passed us by without so much as a sidelong glance. 

 

Walt, Sunday, Day 5  
I didn’t want to leave Albuquerque, but I figured my time was up. I wanted desperately to see Skyler and Walter Junior again—we had parted under such a black cloud. And I wanted to get my money back from Simon. In due time, I would accomplish all of these things.

Ed had proven to be a reliable man. He secured a Chevy Silverado for our journey, and I estimated it to be sufficiently low profile. Saul and I would sit in the bed; it was more comfortable than I’ guessed, but it was close quarters.

 

After Saul generated some mind-numbing small talk, I turned to a more profitable topic.

“Let’s do some brainstorming,” I said.

“OK,” Saul replied reluctantly.

“Problem: how to transfer millions of dollars in cash into spendable money. Ultimate goal: get the money to my family.”

“First you need to launder the money, and for that you’d a multi-million dollar business. You’ve got what…” Saul paused waiting for me to fill in the number, I shook my head. “Say $10 million. If you want access to all of it, you’re looking at a business that generates, say $65 million a year.” I was perplexed that Saul knew about my money. Though he probably threw $10 million out there because it was easy number to calculate.

“Maybe Sky can launder the money if I could just get it to her.”

“What are you going to do, ship her the barrel?”

“No, send her small boxes with really big denominations.”

“Ehn…” Saul made a buzzer sound… “$100 is the largest denomination. You’d have to mail her dozens of boxes.”

“What about putting the money into expensive objects: jewelry, art.”

“You still have the problem of how you’re going to get it to her. Her assets are probably frozen. That means everything, the house, the silverware, the cars.”

“Her family?”

“All the same problems… you’ve just added a layer is all.”

Saul was being helpful but he didn’t seem to want to solve the problem, which was pissing me off. “What have you got, Saul? There must be a way.”

“I’m telling you, Frank,” he used the name awkwardly, like it was a strain to remember. Better he get used to it now… “there isn’t a way. There’s small stuff… like let her run up the credit card and then you can pay the bills, but it’s fraught with danger. You’ll blow your cover… our cover. And, again, all of the purchases would be subject to seizure. You could put some of it in a safe deposit box and give her access, but she couldn’t get to that for years, until the heat was off of her. And if your cover gets blown, there goes the money.”

“No, wait, that’s good. What’s the down side?” I asked, watching as a small group of motorcycles roared by.

“Biggest problem is how are you going to get the box established… who are you going to get to do it? And then you can only get a fraction of the money in there. Even if you bought a couple of drawers, you could only get say a bin’s worth in there. And then, like I said, if it’s in your name, it only lasts as long as Frank Dobbs.”

I didn’t like Saul referring to my demise, mortal or otherwise. I stared at him long and hard. “You think I’m going somewhere.”

“No offense, but, I’m just being trying to be realistic here. That’s what you want, right? Practical advice? I think no matter what you do, the moment you take those bins out of the basement in White Bear Lake, the feds are going to sniff out that money and you and poof,” he made two fists and splayed out his fingers in synchrony with the word, “your hard earned cash will be gone and we’ll be up shit creek and Skyler and your children will be none the richer. The ultimate outcome: you’ll increase Skyler’s odds of doing time for benefitting from a criminal enterprise.”

Saul took a prescription bottle out of his pocket and popped a pill, chasing it down with a red Gatorade. 

“Whatcha taking there, buddy?” I tried my damnedest to sound friendly, concerned. He didn’t want to answer me, quickly returning the pills to his pocket. But I could see him calculating, my reaction to the Skyler/Kim stories having had the desired effect.

“Xanax,” he said defensively.

“For anxiety?” I asked; he nodded. The glimmerings of a plot began to form in my mind.


	3. Fargo

Saul, Monday, Day 6  
We arrived in White Bear Lake in the dead of night. The house was on a street of sad houses and it looked to be the saddest of the lot. It was old and sort of decrepit, with what appeared to be grey shingles as siding. Charming.

Ed got to work unloading our things with Walt’s assistance. Once the truck was cleared out, Ed said he’d be on his way. He had given us instructions about the rent, the landlord, a little bit about the town. Walt had agreed to the electromagnetic hypersensitivity cover, so we’d asked Ed to stop for candles and candle holders at a 24 hour Walmart. Lit by candle light, the old house felt pretty creepy. It was furnished, but everything had the smell of stale beer and other unsavory odors. Ed had explained that renters were usually students from the nearby community college. And now there would be two middle age men shacking up like Felix and Oscar... I’d have to somehow get the word out that we were brothers.

Walt and I started exploring the house, Walt moving much quicker than me through the rooms. A spacious living room/ dining room dominated the first floor. The kitchen, off the dining room, was small and utilitarian, painted a puke green. The front door entered into the living room. There was also a back door in the kitchen leading from the detached garage. The house had four bedrooms, the largest of which was upstairs along with one spare bedroom. Two cramped bedrooms were on the main level. I hadn’t even made it upstairs yet when Walt declared, “I’ll let you have the big bedroom. Upstairs.” It couldn’t be because he was being magnanimous. It must have to do with wanting to control my movement. After all, it would be much easier for me to slip away in the night if I was on the first floor and he was on the second. But I was already going to be out and about in the daytime.... 

If I wanted to flee, I could just do it then. But I wasn’t planning to. I didn’t take Walt’s threats about Kim and Chuck all that seriously, but I couldn’t risk it. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if anything happened to Kim. And anyway what kind of life would I be fleeing to? Deep cover in Omaha? I didn’t even know if I could afford a new identity from Ed. I hadn’t had a chance to count the money to see how much Walt had paid Ed for helping him abduct me. The tote bag sure felt lighter.

We were both exhausted from the long trip. It had been hard to sleep in the truck, and we’d be on the road for twenty hours. “I’m going to hit the hay,” Walt announced. “Do you need help with your suitcases?”

“I do,” I told him, relieved and a little surprised for the help.

Upstairs in my new bedroom, just one task occupied me before crashing: counting my money to see how much Walt had pilfered. I had squirreled away $1.4 million to bring with me into my new life. I discovered the money I'd earned with blood, sweat, and tears had been whittled down to just over a million dollars. Since Walt had designated $100,000 for the down payment to Simon, this meant that Ed’s loyalty had been bought for $250,000. It’s chilling to know the exact amount of the price on your head. I cursed Walt, and Ed, before climbing into bed where I fell into a deep sleep.

Walt, Tuesday Morning, Day 7  
I woke Saul up around 8:30am to administer my chemo. Somehow Ed had been able to procure the supplies and medicine for my chemotherapy. It was part of the reason I was such a complicated client, that and how badly I’m wanted by the authorities.

Saul helped me get everything set up in the living room. I sat on a nasty light blue velvet chair. It was open-armed and had ostentatiously carved arms and legs. It looked like the owner had procured his furniture from a variety of rummage sales. A brown faux leather chair sat adjacent to my chair and a prim sofa sat across from the chairs. The sofa had a greenish hue in the flickering candlelight. In between sat a beat-up black coffee table, the kind you assemble yourself. Particle board peeked out from a dent in the wood.

The first step in the chemo process was that Saul had insert a catheter into the back of my hand. Most people don’t like it when a professional sticks them—try a washed up _lawyer_. His hands were shaky. I slapped him lightly and said, “There. Now I’ve hit you. Don’t worry about poking me more than once. Just get it done.” 

Once he calmed down, I was surprised by the work Saul did with the needle. He only stuck me only a couple of times trying to get the catheter set up and the drip worked right away.

“Good job,” I told him. I sounded like I was speaking to a dog. He smiled obligingly. “Now get me those newspapers,” I said referring to papers Ed had bought at our last stop: USA Today and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. He handed me the papers and started to walk away. “No,” I said. “ _Stay here_ in case I need something.” I wanted to discuss our plans, but my first priority was to check the news.

Without internet or TV, USA Today was the best way to keep up with the national news. I perused the front page and then checked the state news for New Mexico. It was an item about genetically modified food. My case _had_ to be more newsworthy, but I was thankful for the lack of coverage. A quick scan of the entire paper revealed nothing about me at all. I needed the Albuquerque Journal. Saul was reading the local paper and once I had read through everything of interest in the USA Today, we switched. Judging from the stories and ads, all these Minnesotans cared about was fish, winter and beer. 

It was early October and the weather was in the 50s. I was glad we’d have a burn in period before the onslaught of winter. I was glad too that the house had gas heat so that we could run the furnace without blowing the electromagnetic hypersensitivity cover. It was a good idea Saul had. If I was being really punctilious about it, the thermostat sent an electric pulse to the furnace; but I wasn’t going to obsess over this detail and I was fairly certain Saul wouldn’t think of it.

“What’s on the docket for tomorrow?” I asked him.

“Job search,” he replied.

“Get me a smart phone,” I told him. Ed had given us each a credit card under our new names. “Hell, get two phones.” It wasn’t that I trusted him with a phone, it was the inevitability of his access to one.

“Ehn. Bad idea. I can’t even count the ways that a smart phone could get us into trouble.”

“I need CNN, Saul. If the feds are about to knock on the door, I want to know about it.” I gestured with my free hand to emphasize the point.

“If the feds figure out you’re… _we’re_ in Minnesota, they’re gonna keep that to themselves until they have us in custody. They’re not going to blather it all over the news.”

“I want a Galaxy,” I told him. 

“It’s your funeral,” he muttered.

“Also, pick up a chess game and a deck of cards.”

“I don’t play chess… if you’re thinking of playing with me…”

“You’ll learn. I’ll teach you. Go to the bookstore and get a beginner’s book for you and then one that has classic problems for me. Get two chess boards.”

“Sounds like fun,” he quipped.

 

Saul, Wednesday Morning, Day 8  
Ed had given me a map of town. It was one of those stylized numbers that had drawings of the key landmarks and said “Welcome to White Bear Lake” in arching block letters. I could see that it would be a long walk to the library—about twelve blocks. Doable if I was in good condition. But since I wasn’t, I walked a block and a half to the nearest convenience store and called for a cab.

I was ecstatic to be out of the house and away from Walt. I felt myself relaxing as I sat down in the cab. It was a beautiful fall morning. The trees were changing colors and were brilliant against a blue sky: bright yellows, reds and oranges. It was sinking in that Albuquerque was in the past and I was starting to feel good about being out of there. No more walking into my office and thinking ‘this will be the day the feds darken my doorstep.’

I had the taxi drop me off at a Walgreen’s. My first order of business was to downgrade to a cane. They had a robust selection--must be a lot of cane users in White Bear Lake. I was attracted to an orange one, but settled on black, the most inconspicuous. I deposited my crutch in a dumpster and set off to the library, a block and a half a way.

At the library I was disappointed to learn you needed a library card in order to use the computers. I stifled an impulse to lecture them about public access laws, donned a smile, and dutifully filled out the form to get my card. The extra scrutiny had a chilling effect on my search choices. I had desperately wanted to look at the news, but decided against it. Instead I kept to local interests.

The job situation was pretty dismal and I felt lucky that I just needed a job, any job, and not an income. A particularly good job would have a cash component to the pay, so a bartender job looked promising. There was also Starbucks, a factory job, something right there at the library, and a movie theatre projectionist. I was most intrigued by the projectionist. I didn’t have much experience for any of these: but I had done a little bit of bartending when I was in college and I had worked at a movie theatre in high school. Not impressive credentials. Paul Dobbs’ experience wasn’t that helpful. Mostly experience as a machine operator, and I wasn’t about to try my hand at that; with my luck, my hand would end up _in_ the machine. I printed a few maps and headed over to the Best Buy. 

Walt, Wednesday Morning, Day 8  
The next morning I was bone-tired, my body wracked from the chemo. I wasn’t interested in breakfast. I slept in. Saul was gone when I got up, so I decided to make a thorough inventory of the house, starting with Saul’s room. I saw that he hadn’t had time to unpack. Nonetheless, I did a search of the room to see if he stashed away anything of importance. I found nothing. The last person to occupy this room must have been fastidious. It was much cleaner than the rest of the house. My own bedroom was dusty and had given me a coughing attack the night before. 

I checked Saul’s suitcases—mostly clothes and some papers, a couple of DVDs ( _Monty Python_ and _Rear Window_ ) and a couple of books ( _Atlas Shrugged_ and _Catcher in the Rye_ ). In a suitcase, otherwise full of clothes, I found a box a bit larger than a shoe box. It contained some photographs. One photo had Saul and Kim at a backyard barbecue. Saul was wearing one of those idiotic “Kiss the Chef” aprons. There was also a family photo. His brother appeared to be a good ten years older than Saul. Also in the box were his passport and birth certificate and other important documents, some _dinero_ , and most curiously, a VHS video tape. 

In his shaving kit I found what I was after: _the Xanax_. He had stockpiled before disappearing. Three bottles supplied by three different doctors. I opened one bottle—it was a standard pharmacy bottle with no safety seal. The pills were purplish-blue in color and oval in shape. One side said “Xanax 1.0” and the other had a vertical score down the middle. I put one pill into a quart-sized ziploc bag and slipped it in my pocket and then returned everything the way it was.

Next I went to the basement. The junk there had a certain order to it, roughly grouped by the college students who’d left it there, it would seem. There were books everywhere, which seemed wasteful given the steep cover price of text books. I remember how precious each of my books was to me back in the day. These kids seemed to have parents with wide open pocket books which suggested that living at 632 Beaver Lane was a real luxury for a Century College student.

I wasn’t interested in the books, although the chemistry text caught my eye: _Chemistry: The Science of Change, 13th Edition_. I _hate_ that book. Ritnow and Carter were small minded pricks who screwed me over. I was to have been a co-author on the first edition, but some differences of opinion dampened my contributions. They dropped me, but kept the work I had already done. $65 for a used copy. I should have _sued_ them.   
In one pile of stuff, I found what I was looking for: a VCR, complete with remote taped to the side. It appeared to be in good working order. In another pile, I found a stack of Playboys. And in yet another pile I found a small tube TV: perfect. 

I hit the motherlode when I came across some old 2x4s. They had the characteristic green tint of processed wood. These would come in handy, but for now I left them where they lay. I would also need some foil. I grabbed the Playboys and headed upstairs to search the kitchen. 

The kitchen was also rich with the rejects of fickle college students: mismatched kitchen ware, tupperware, even food. I spotted my foil, but I also chanced upon something else of interest: _rat poisoning_. I put on a pair of gloves, located a gallon plastic zip bag and transferred the contents of the box into the bag. I carefully sealed the bag. Next, I boiled some water and made some Minute Rice. The box of rice looked pretty old, but I didn’t care about the expiration date. I had found some food coloring in one of the cupboards so I added green, blue and a little bit of black to the boiling rice. The resulting color was close to what I’d removed from the box. Once the rice was dry and cool, I had a reasonable counterfeit of the rat poisoning. I filled the box with rice and put it back where I found it in the cupboard. I saw that the box had created a void in the dust so I was able to return the poison to the exact same spot. Now, if Saul tried to poison _me_ , he’d just be feeding me old blue rice. I placed the actual poison in a box of text books in the basement as a temporary hiding place.

It was 10:30. I had maybe an hour before Saul came home for lunch. We’d agreed that he would do some preliminary research at the library and bring me a list of job openings for us to consider together. I wasn’t at all comfortable with him running around in the world, so I was going to keep him on a tight leash.

Walt, Wednesday Afternoon, Day 8  
Saul came back around 12:30. I was relieved to see him. The fact hadn’t escaped me that if he was going to flee he’d do it right away. 

He had with him two Galaxies and a list of job possibilities. I favored the machinist job.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Saul explained. “When they find out I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, it hurts the Paul Dobbs cover. This is a small town.” He had a point; he usually did. The guy came across like a weasel, but he was a smart weasel.

“OK, then the projectionist,” I said. I brought a bowl of soup and a BLT sandwich to the table and told Saul to get his own. It took him two trips; I noticed he now had a cane. “I’d think the projectionist job is low profile… you’d be spending most of your time in the booth?”

“That’d be my guess--locked up in an attic like Emily Dickinson. The description isn’t very informative. I have a little bit of experience, you know. Just a high school thing, but I’ve threaded a projector before.”

“Then the projectionist it is.... What’s the town like?”

“Spread out. There’s a quaint downtown, but not a lot happening there. There are big box stores out by the highway. Your basic Mom and Pop killers: Walmart, Target, Best Buy. There’s actually a lake called White Bear Lake and it’s huge. Back in the day this used to be resort town, so it has a vacation-y feel. Very Minnesota,” he made his “o” long. I didn’t know what he meant by ‘very Minnesota,’ but it didn’t matter. I could be in Timbuktu, or _Belize_ …

“You’ve spent time here before?” I asked.

“A little bit, fishing and camping as a kid up in the boundary waters. But I spent a lot of time in Wisconsin,” again he pronounced the “o” funny, kind of like a Canadian. “Where are you from?” Saul asked. 

I paused and considered him. I didn’t like Saul asking personal questions, anything that could be used against me. At the same time, what were we going to talk about if I shut down every avenue of conversation? It seemed innocent enough… “California,” I replied, and before he could ask ‘where’ I added, “north of L.A.”

“And you came to New Mexico to be a Los Alamos egghead?”

I nodded. I didn’t like that he was fitting together puzzle pieces even though they seemed benign.

Saul cleared our plates, thanked me for lunch and said he’d be off on his job search. He was wearing Dockers, a blue dress shirt, a pair of brown loafers and a light jacket. Not what I think of as job hunting attire, but I guess Saul was searching in a different strata. “On second thought, let me grab a tie. Dress for success and all that…” he said as if he could read my mind.

Saul, Wednesday Afternoon, Day 8  
My first stop was a used car lot. I’d been thinking about it all day. There was just no good way to get around this town without a car. Hell, I couldn’t even get to the potential employers. And, if I got a job, I’d have to take a cab, at least until my knee improved. The cab rides would take a fair portion of my day’s earnings. That just wouldn’t make sense to an observer. Likewise, the grocery store was seven blocks. The town was just too spread out and it didn’t have public transportation. It just wasn’t practical not to have a car and it would draw unwanted attention. 

I had grabbed some cash when I was home at lunch and I figured I could get something passable for around two grand. I chose a dark green 1996 Ford Ranger. Not my first choice, but it possessed the virtue of comparatively low miles. I didn’t need the thing breaking down in the middle of winter. I didn’t think about Walt’s reaction; I figured he’d see the car as inevitable. I was wrong.


	4. There Will Be Blood

Saul, Wednesday Afternoon, Day 8  
After the car dealer, my next stop was the movie theatre. The smell of freshly popped popcorn overwhelmed the place and filled me with nostalgia. I remembered some of my favorite movie-going experiences, _Jaws, The Blues Brothers, Star Wars_ …

“Can I _help_ you?” a voice was asking, pulling me out of my reverie. I had walked right past the cashier/ticket taker and she was a little miffed. She was good looking: a Black woman with short wavy hair, sassy and bright. She wasn’t really my type—well, she wasn’t Saul Goodman’s type—but maybe she was Paul Dobbs’ type?

I limped back over to her. Her name badge said ‘Taryn’. She sat in one of those old-fashioned ticket booths that protruded from the building. “Hello, Taryn,” I said, rhyming it with ‘Karen.’ “I’m here about the projectionist job.” She gave me the old up and down, lingering for a moment on my leg as if its condition had any bearing on my ability to be a projectionist.

“Projection booth’s upstairs, you know,” she finally said.

“Oh, that’s okay. My knee’s only sprained—almost better.” I stood on my bad leg and did a little ‘ta da’ with my arms, passing the cane dramatically from hand to hand. It hurt a lot but I smiled instead of wincing.

She laughed and reached into a drawer, producing a piece of paper and a clipboard. “Here’s an application, Mr.?”

“Dobbs. Paul Dobbs.” It sounded awkward, like I was trying it on, and for a second I hesitated, like my cover had been blown.

“I’ll call the…” I began to panic, “…manager,” she said. “Don’t worry. She’s a pushover. You’ve already passed the hardest part of the applicant screening process,” she said pointing to herself and mouthing ‘me.’

I sat down on a bench and started filling in the information that I memorized from Paul Dobbs’ biography, plus some details of my own. I pulled out my driver’s license to write down the number. I was no longer that guy in the picture that Ed had taken. My beard was starting to come in and my hair looked markedly different after Ed’s ruthless haircut. About the only things that remained the same were my sideburns and a haunted look in my eyes. As I was still working on the application a young lady approached me. She was in her early twenties, wearing khaki slacks and a white blouse with the movie theatre logo on it.  
“Hi, I’m Lacey,” she said in a breezy manner. “You’re a projectionist?” She said hopefully.

“At your service,” I replied, standing up and trying to be nonchalant about my knee which was now throbbing after my stupid little dance move. “Paul Dobbs,” I said, offering my hand.

She showed me back to a cramped office that brought up unpleasant memories of my office in the nail salon. Three movie posters overpowered the tiny room: _The Hunger Games, Silver Linings Playbook,_ and _12 Years a Slave._

“So where were you a projectionist?”

“Actually, I threaded the projector… back in Milwaukee. Two years when I was in high school. It’s been awhile, but I figure it’s like riding a bicycle, right?”

“Yeah, and you can fall off.” I laughed—I liked her sense of humor. I knew what she meant. I’d see movies played upside down. And backwards. In fact my experience threading was minimal: maybe a dozen times over one summer. My real expertise came from helping Don, the alcoholic projectionist, get out of jams. I could fix the film when it was out of frame. Or upside and backwards.

“Well, I need a projectionist.”

“Look, I was the head usher and the primary threader,” I lied. “We didn’t have a full-time projectionist.”

“Can you handle brain wrap?”

“So, you have a platter system? Sure.” Again I manipulated the truth. I had helped Don untangle a few brain wraps. I mean, I knew what they were at least; how many people walking down the street even know that brain wraps exist? 

If they had a platter system, I don’t even know why they needed a full-time projectionist. Platters meant no reel-changeovers. Nothing to do while the movie was playing. So it was ten, fifteen minutes of hustle between shows to get the films threaded and then nothing for more than an hour. God, I needed this job.  
“Let’s continue our conversation up in the booth,” Lacey said. The stairs to the projection booth were right outside the office. We traipsed up the dank stairwell to the darkened booth. Lacey turned a small work light by one of the projectors. “Go ahead and thread the film, Paul.”

I stared at the thing like it had a gun on me. Walt and I had agreed that this was the job; if I didn’t get it, I risked pissing him off. “This one’s pretty different from the projectors back in Milwaukee,” I hedged.

“It’s like a bicycle,” Lacey reminded me.

I took ahold of the film leader and made what I believed was a passable effort.

“Close,” she said. “You missed the sound head.” I saw what she meant. 

“Oh, this is a talkie?” I asked with mock surprise. I slackened the film and unthreaded then rethreaded it around the head.

“Perfect,” she said. I sighed audibly. “When can you start?”

The next day was Thursday. They would have their change-overs that night: taking apart the films that were leaving, assembling the incoming films. “I can start tomorrow. You’ve got tear downs and assemblies, yeah?”

“Yes. That would be great! I’m going to go crazy if I have to work another Thursday night in the booth. Did I mention that we watch all the films?”

“What?”

“After the new film is assembled, we play it to make sure it’s together right.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed, silently bemoaning the fact that I had just signed up to work deep into the nights on Thursday— 3 maybe 4am. But what did it matter? I didn’t have anything else to be doing, except playing legal counsel/housewife to a lunatic.

“So the workweek is Wednesday through Sunday. Sound good?”

“It does,” I replied, thinking that it would be good to get away from Walt on Friday and Saturday nights. Though all of our days would basically be the same, there would have been something particularly depressing about being alone with him on weekends.

 

Saul, Wednesday Evening, Day 8  
I pulled the truck up to the garage and parked it there on the driveway. I had a teenager’s giddy excitement over the truck. It would be a little bit of freedom… and the possibility of an escape.

I guess Walt also saw it as being about freedom and escape.

“What the hell is that?!!” Walt yelled at me the moment I came in the door.

“It’s wheels to get around town. Do you know how spread out this place is… with no public…” He clocked me right in the eye. I was flattened on the floor, the groceries that I’d been carrying scattered everywhere. Walt loomed over me, straddling me. He punched me a couple of more times, in the mouth and the cheek bone. I was yelling for him to stop. “Not the face, Walt…” I sputtered.

“Frank!” he corrected me with a left hook to my jaw.

“Frank, not the face! I got a job…” 

He started coughing and I wriggled away. Slowly he got to his feet, the coughing calming down. He obliged my request with a couple of swift kicks to the ribs. Now _I_ was coughing and fighting for air.

“What’s this job?” he asked, as if he hadn’t just mauled me.

My mouth was full of blood and I was disoriented. My head pounded. “The movie theatre,” I mumbled.

“Excellent. Our first choice. That should be a good cover.”

I was still laid out on the floor, and with all my injuries, past and present, I was having trouble getting up. Walt stepped over and offered me a hand like we were some kind of teammates.

“What the fuck was that? You kicked the shit out of me.”

“Because you don’t seem to get it. We _talk_ about things before you do them. _We_ make agreements. Like with your job search, you did the right thing consulting me. You work for _me_ , Saul. I don’t want you so much as taking a piss without asking for permission,” Walt paused. “There will be consequences for this transgression.”

I was leaning against the kitchen counter now, clutching my side. Blood was trickling down from a cut above my eye, soiling one of maybe three dress shirts I had to my name. “What do you mean consequences? Weren’t there already consequences?” I asked, indicating my face.

Walt was walking away, and I thought the conversation was over, but he came right back with a first aid kit. It must have been something that had come with the house. An ancient metal box, not plastic. I thought I saw rust around the edges. Walt started fishing through the box, taking a couple of things out.

“Do you have first aid supplies? Peroxide?” Walt asked me. 

“No, but what’s that?” I said about the first aid kit. “Something from the temple of Karnak?”

He grabbed a bottle of vodka from the spilled groceries and told me to sit at the table. Using gauze and the vodka, he cleaned my wounds. He seemed most worried about the cut over my eye.

“This one’s bad,” he said, weirdly concerned about an injury he’d inflicted himself. “I think it needs stitches.”

“Christ, no. It can’t be that bad.”

“If cleaning up your face requires some patching up, then that’s what we have to do. I don’t want you walking around looking like a washed up prize fighter.”

“Then don’t punch me!”

Walt saturated my eyebrow with vodka. It stung like a motherfucker. “Hang on just a second,” I told Walt. I grabbed the vodka and took a healthy swig. He did the same. He took out a needle and some thread, doused both in alcohol and then proceeded to make the first pass with the needle. I flinched, but did my best to hold steady. Walt rubbed my arm. Then he started the back and forth process of sewing the cut together. Next he took a tube of bacitracin and slathered the gel over the stitches. It was cold and reeked of medicine. The tube appeared to be unused, thank God.

“Now, how could we have avoided all this?” he asked in his most teacherly tone, putting a hand on my thigh.

If I had gone to Nebraska… I thought wistfully. “Communication,” I answered with a bitterness I hoped he didn’t perceive. “I’ll take the truck back tomorrow.”

“No, keep it. It will be useful and it sounds like you need it to get around. How is your knee, by the way? I see you switched to using a cane.”

This was a trick question. If I said it was good then he’d worry about other ways of controlling me. So I said it was worse than it was.

I took a Xanax, chasing it with another swig of vodka. “Are there any painkillers in there?”

“No, but I have a supply.” Walt left to get me some ibuprofen. I made up a bag of ice and took it to the couch.

 

Walt, Wednesday Afternoon, Day 8  
After we had lunch I napped and took it easy; my body felt like it had been bulldozed from the previous day’s chemo. At around 6:30pm, I heard a car pulling into the driveway. I assumed Saul had gotten a ride from someone. I peaked out the window and to my surprise Saul was driving an old pickup truck. I was already annoyed by the lateness of the hour, so I flipped out when I saw the truck. I couldn’t believe his nerve— _purchasing a car?!?— without discussing it with me first_? I didn’t have him under sufficient control. Some twist of fate would need to befall Chuck or Kim.

When he walked in the door, I pummeled him. He collapsed to the floor and I kept pummeling him. I really lost my temper. I think I would have put him in the hospital if the assault wasn’t aborted by a coughing attack. When I caught my breath, he was still on the floor, writhing and moaning, so I gave him a few kicks in the gut for bringing on my coughing fit. I was satisfied to see _him_ gasping for air.

I started to simmer down. I don’t know why I had gotten so out of control mad. I had hurt him, and that was stupid. I needed to intimidate and control him, yes. Breaking his will would take it too far. I switched to helping mode; that would keep him guessing as to whom he was dealing with.


	5. Cinema Paradiso

Walt, Thursday Morning, Day 9  
The following day, Saul started his job. He said the quick start would earn him bonus points with his new manager. He’d explained in mind-numbing detail how Thursdays were the end of the movie theatre week and this entailed a lot of extra work, what with the old films leaving and new films coming. I wondered at his efforts to impress his boss at such an insignificant job. It’s not like we needed the money, only the veneer of normalcy—someone in the house should be working.

What disturbed me most is that I had no way of knowing that Saul actually had a job. I only knew about the job, and for that matter, every other detail about the town, from Saul. And he was, as the say in literature, an unreliable narrator.

Saul, Thursday Morning, Day 9  
I started up the Ranger and made my way along residential streets crowded with homes built in the 40s. I thought about the previous night and Walt’s bizarre love/hate behavior. While I could understand Walt’s reaction to the truck, over-the-top as it was, his playing nurse was downright creepy. He must be mindfucking me. 

But what was I thinking, purchasing the truck? I had acted like a willful teenager, testing the boundaries. Walt’s response was a painful lesson in where those borders lay. My face had taken a beating and it was going to be hard to explain. Hell, it might even scare Lacey off all together. 

I approached the old theatre from the back alley, walking past a dumpster that reminded me of where Marco had died. I wondered if he could see me now, and if so what he must think of me going to work in a movie theatre. He’d probably wonder what my angle was. The truth of it was, I had none. My ambition to thrive had literally been beat out of me over the past two weeks. A shell of my former self, my game had been reduced to just surviving day-to-day.

I came to a side door of the theatre and pounded, as Lacey had instructed. It took her a couple of minutes to get to the door; she was probably off in the far reaches of the cavernous building. She was taken aback by my appearance, though I tried to improve the overall impression by wearing a tie with a dress shirt and Dockers. But my clothes couldn’t hide the evidence of Walt’s wrath. “What the hell happened?” she said as she chained up the door behind me.

“I’m sorry. I know this doesn’t look good. It’s my brother, he has mental issues. He doesn’t know what he’s doing…” I followed her up to the projection booth.

“I expect bruises from the ushers. Half of them are gang-bangers. But I thought you’d be reliable, boring even…”

“I am reliable. I’m here. I can do this job. I’ll be boring, too, if that’s what you want. My brother is a shut-in and he’s mentally unstable; he didn’t mean to hurt me.”  
“OK. Why don’t you thread them up and I’ll double check everything. Each projector is a little bit different.”

After threading, we filled out the new hire paperwork. I had brought Paul Dobbs’ birth certificate and social security card and was relieved when the documents passed muster. Nor did Lacey comment on my driver’s license photo—snapped by Ed the first day of my disappearance—which portrayed Saul Goodman, fugitive, and not Paul Dobbs, projectionist.

After the paperwork, Lacey gave me a tour of the building. I was relieved for the distraction and enjoyed the Art Deco stylings on generous display throughout the building. The theatre had boasted one large auditorium back in the day but somewhere along the way some owner had cut up the big house into three auditoriums. More recently, the building next door had been acquired and a fourth screen added. The theatre had just over 1200 seats total. It was too bad to see the classic building cut up and jig-sawed back together, but economics had surely been the motive. In fact, I couldn’t see how any theatre could survive in this little town.

When I asked, Lacey dug out a manual for one of the projectors. I spent the afternoon reading the manual and studying each of the projectors. I’m not sure why I was putting so much effort into getting the job right. I think I just wanted to get immersed in something besides being a hostage on-the-lam. Plus, I genuinely liked the movie theatre and the business of movies.

I found the projection booth to be a soothing retreat. The flickering of the films in the projectors caused colored lights to dance on the walls. The gears moving through the sprockets emitted a reassuring clicking sound. The booth temperature was set low to create the right environment for the delicate film. It felt good to be there, safe and secure. And simple.

But the booth was also a mess, so I set about cleaning it. By the time evening rolled around, you could have delivered a baby in that place. Lacey seemed impressed. “The films are here,” she came told me. Considering my leg she asked, “Will you be able to bring the films upstairs?” They came in heavy canisters containing three to four reels each.

“Not yet, I’m afraid. Maybe next week?”

“OK. I’ll get someone to bring them up. Are you hungry? We’re putting in an order at Mickey’s… not Mickey D’s, don’t worry,” she added when she saw the sour look on my face. 

“There’s a menu on the desk in the office.”

I had three films to assemble and three films to ‘tear down’. I vaguely knew how to do it: the assemblies involved splicing together the individual reels to make one gigantic reel that laid on its side on the platter. Tearing down was just undoing the process. Lacey had given me a quick refresher, but the problem was that I never really knew how to do it in the first place, so a refresher was a bit over my head. I’d seen the projectionist do it a couple of times back at my high school job. The thing was that you had to spin the film on at extremely fast speeds, all the while keeping the slack just right or else the fragile film would snap, and then quickly splinter if you didn’t get the motor off. Lose enough frames and you’d get a jump in the action, disturbing the continuity of the film.

I’d been reading the manual, and that helped a little. But despite my legal background, I wasn’t much of a book learner. I had to feel my way into something physical, develop the muscle memory for it. Just as I was breaking Linsanity for a third time, Daunte, one of the ushers, showed up in the booth. He was a tall black kid, and unlike some of the other employees, his maroon usher’s jacket was clean, his white button down shirt crisp.

“Um, hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I replied. “What’s up?”

“Can I watch?” he asked.

“The movie? Oh, sure. It will be ready in about twenty minutes.”

“No. Um, I mean, watch you put together the show.”

I didn’t need an audience for my ineptitude, but there was something disarming about the kid. I let him stay, and I found that while chatting with him I relaxed. The film did not break again. 

As each of the outgoing films finished playing, I had to undo the assembly process, finding the splice between the reels and returning the film to canisters for delivery back to the distributor, or on to the next movie house. 

Besides shreading a film by breaking it, a couple of things could go very wrong with the whole process. A reel could be upside down, if some schmo had screwed up. Or, the reels could be out of order. The later was a bit harder to detect, necessitating that each film be watched fairly closely. You had to follow the plot lines to make sure everything was together right. Playing all the new movies added several hours on to an already long night.

I moved back and forth from task to task, checking on movies, tearing down film. I enjoyed the tactile nature of working with the movies. I liked cutting the film and splicing it back together. There was something so peaceful about it and something so utterly different from my previous life of threats out in the desert, drugs, guns. It was even a respite from fevered searches through newspapers and anxiety-provoking CNN watching.

Walt, Thursday Afternoon, Day 9  
I took a nap after lunch. I was still wiped out from the chemo, and beating Saul had taken more energy than I really had. Plus my hand felt, and looked, like raw meat. That little shit.

Now it was time for a bit of shopping. I took out my gleaming new phone and the credit card that Ed had procured for me. Next I removed from my pocket the Ziploc bag that contained the Xanax I’d lifted from Saul. I carefully studied its shape and color. Going on-line, I located a website proferring the supplies to make your own vitamins. Here I found a pill-press that could roughly mimic the shape of a Xanax and the binder to hold my ingredients together. Next I went to a chemistry site and ordered colorant: red and blue. Finally, I purchased a padlock to provide privacy for my other acquisitions. Once all of that was accomplished, my curiosity overwhelmed me and I went up to Saul’s bedroom to retrieve his video tape.

I took it down to the basement, blacked out the windows with some cardboard, set up the old VCR and TV, and sat down for the big reveal. It was a reel of his “Better Call Saul” commercials: those asinine, boorish ads that would destroy the tranquility of late night TV viewing. Once I knew Saul, I had assumed the ads were all part of an elaborately constructed persona. But now I wondered, could it be that he actually took pride in this drivel? I cringed for him. I fast-forwarded through the entire tape to make sure there wasn’t anything hidden on it. No, the whole tape was full of over-the-top non-sense: buxom blondes arresting hapless drunks, long lists of people to sue, Saul crying alligator tears over the Wayfarer accident… 

I went back upstairs and returned the tape to the box, but not as I found it. I deliberately put the tape on top of the pile of photos. And I took the passport and birth certificate. Not that he would be able to use the Saul Goodman identity ever again, but I would stop him from trying, or even fantasizing about trying. I couldn’t wait until he confronted me about the tape, though somehow I doubted he would.

Walt, Thursday Night, Day 9  
Saul came home in the middle of the night—it was after 4:00am. I was sitting there waiting in the blue velvet chair, with the candles flickering. He flinched when he noticed me there.

“Do you want a beer? I’m having a beer,” he said, heading for the refrigerator.

I was noticing a trend—he always came home later than he said he would. I knew that tonight it wouldn’t have been under his control and that he probably hadn’t known when he’d be home. But that didn’t stop me from giving him shit about it. I approached the kitchen. In my bare feet, I didn’t make much noise and again I startled him.

“Jesus,” he said and then held out a beer.

“No, Saul.” I crowded in to him so that he couldn’t move between me and the refrigerator door. “I noticed that you’re late tonight.”

“Oh, come on. I didn’t know what time I’d be home.”

“You’re always late. When you tell me a time, I expect you to be here. Got it?”

“Got it,” he replied, his hand reaching into his pocket for his pills. I backed away and we returned to the living room.

“Now explain to me again why you have to be there so late on Thursday nights,” this because I hadn’t paid attention the first time he’d told me. Again, he went through the details ad nauseam. “And tell me about your new movies.” 

I made him describe the plots, but also individual scenes. I probed, pushing him to go into great detail; I wanted to verify that he actually watched the movie and not just the trailer, that he actually worked at a movie theatre and that it wasn’t all some elaborate fabrication. Saul’s storytelling was mesmerizing—he _weaved_ a tale and took great care in its telling. But I got frustrated when he missed a scene because he had moved on to some other task.

“Next week I want you to tell me what films you’re getting before Thursday. Then we’ll decide which one you’ll watch in its entirety.” 

He sighed, but nodded his agreement. “I’m going to have to start charging you admission.”

Saul, Friday Afternoon, Day 10  
The twelve o’clock shows all ran smoothly, and I have to say I was proud of my work. I had cleared the hurdle of one of the most difficult tasks of the projectionist role. It was just another con, really, walking into some job I had never done before and knocking it out like I knew what I was doing.

As I was threading for the four o’clock shows, thoughts of Walt weaseled their way into my brain. The night before had been weird. Walt was sitting up waiting for me like I was his daughter coming home from a first date. And the interrogation about my day… I guess I can’t blame him too much. He only has my word for it that I’m working at a movie theatre. For all he knows, I could be spending my days at the local DEA office, detailing every move, every transaction over the last five years. Hell, if the idea of prison didn’t frighten me so much, I would be in the local DEA office. 

I went to a large pegboard where the trailers hung. I found the trailer for _Captain Phillips_ and cut out a section of film, about three frames of Tom Hanks. With this I would show Walt incontrovertible evidence of my occupation. Then I snapped a selfie with one of the projectors. I suppose it would have been possible that I simply photoshopped myself on to a picture of a projector. But if Walt knew anything about my computer skills, he’d know that a hundred monkeys with typewriters could have done it faster. I knew about things you _could_ do on a computer, not _how_ to do them.

At around 6pm the crew for the evening started to arrive. Taryn, the scrutinizing cashier, gave me a hug when I offered my hand to shake. “Congratulations on the new job, Paul, and welcome!” she said, embracing me lightly. Surprised, I reacted like Ted Baxter in the opening credits of _Mary Tyler Moore_. What a dope. A pretty girl hugs me and I act put out.

“Thanks, I’m excited to be here,” was my pathetic attempt at a recovery. 

While Taryn was maybe 40, the rest of the staff were all kids in high school and college: Daunte, Sasha, Irina, Carlos and Oliver. It was like the United Nations. At 6:30 a beefy guy wearing a Security windbreaker strolled in. Taryn introduced us; he was Craig, an off-duty police officer. Suddenly my job didn’t feel so ideal anymore.

I looked him hard in the eye as we shook hands. I had to see if there’d be a trace of recognition when he saw my face.

There wasn’t. Instead he said, “Whoa, Paul, looks like you went a few rounds and lost,” He was a loud talker with a deep Minnesoh-ta accent.

“It’s my brother,” I said softly. “He’s mentally unstable, a shut-in actually.”

“A real head case, huh?” Craig responded, still loud. Taryn was selling tickets; I hoped she couldn’t hear us. “What’s he got, schizophrenia? Lots of recluses are schizophrenic.”

“No. He just gets angry and sometimes he gets a little out of control. This is the worst it’s been. Won’t happen again.”

“Sounds like it’s getting worse. You need to give a call to 911 when that kind of thing happens. We’ll help you explain to your brother that he can’t be pounding on ya. Maybe let him cool his feet in the tank.”

“It’s not gonna happen again. I’m working on getting him in to see a doctor. Maybe some meds’ll help.” 

I blew it. I should have prepped, come up with a specific diagnosis for Walt. Walt being a violent schizophrenic not on his meds would have fit perfectly. Or… something else. But I knew why I didn’t just agree when Craig suggested it was schizophrenia. Walt had me that intimidated that I wasn’t going to tell inconsequential lies without his permission. The taste of bile crept into my throat.

I approached Taryn. The films were all threaded for the 7 o’clock show and I didn’t have anything to do. I talked to her as she sold tickets to the trickle of customers that were starting to show up.

“I’m not an eavesdropper or anything, but I heard your conversation. Sorry…”

“Oh, hey, no problem,” I said with a false nonchalance.

“My brother is a schizophrenic, so if it turns out that that’s what it is…” she wasn’t looking at me. Her face was focused on the sidewalk and the customers. Bright yellowish-white lights from the underside of the marquee lit up the sidewalk. She was glowing, softly illuminated in the play of lights.

“The hardest part is his electromagnetic hypersensitivity.”

“Come again…” she turned and looked at me, blinking.

“He… Frank… is allergic to electricity.”

“Now, does he go around wearing foil?”

“Sometimes…” I gave a pained smile, thinking of Chuck.

“Oh, now that’s a sign of schizophrenia, baby.”

“I thought schizophrenics wore foil on their heads to prevent mind reading, not to shield electricity.”

“Who knows why schizophrenics do what they do…” She laughed softly and turned her head, a sympathetic smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

 

Between the seven o’clock and nine o’clock shows Craig said he was heading on break and asked if anyone wanted anything. I realized with horror that he was holding my job application.

Later, alone in the break room with Lacey, I asked her about it.

“What is he, an Immigrations Officer?” I asked sarcastically.

“No, he’s White Bear Lake PD. He does criminal background checks for me,” Lacey explained, dipping one of her french fries into some barbecue sauce. “I assume that won’t be a problem.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m squeaky clean, like a lawyer. A lawyer on the up and up,” I hastened to add, “not a sleazy lawyer…” WHY CAN’T I KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT?!?!

She laughed, which was bad because it was just going to encourage me.

“You’d be surprised how many of these kids dip into the cash register,” she told me, trying to politely navigate eating her ribs in front of an audience. “Often, they get more elaborate than that… Running scams at the concessions stand and the box office. They are smart, I just wish they could use their talent for good.”

“What kind of scams?” I couldn’t resist asking.

“Like selling both halves of the ticket when they are working the window alone. I caught that one on a whim when I decided to check the ticket stubs of two old ladies going into the art theatre. One of them had the invalid half of the ticket, like she was trying to sneak in… Turns out the usher had sold them one ticket for the price of two! Then there’s the bucket scam… this is gross. They’ll collect ‘lightly used’ popcorn buckets from the auditorium and resell them.”

I feigned gagging on my gyros sandwich.

“You can’t tell me you didn’t see this at your theatre,” Lacey said.

“Oh, sure. The main thing was playing games with the inventory. Sometimes somebody would hide cups and buckets. That way the shortage would show up on one day and then they’d pocket the overage when they reintroduced their stash into inventory another day. One time, the manager found a stack of cups hidden in the boiler room and tried to use soda syrup strategically spilled on the floor to ferret out the thief.” I didn’t tell her that the thief was me.

“That’s brilliant. Did it work?”

“The cup thief was crafty like a mouse. He, or she, did comeback but avoided the syrup trap and retrieved the cups…” Lacey looked disappointed. “Sorry, kind of anti-climatic. Boring even…”

“Not anti-climatic for the mouse,” she said and I smiled.

Lacey got up to leave, and I was about to follow her when Taryn entered the break room. I lingered.

“How are you liking it so far?” Taryn asked. I sat back down.

“It’s good. A little lonely up in that booth, but good. I feel very comfortable. How long have you been here?”

“Three years. It’s a job. How come you were in the job market?” she tore open a package of saltines and crumbled them into her chili.

“New to town… my brother and I moved to be closer to our family,” I said, rolling out the Paul Dobbs’ story. “My parents are getting older… they live in Isanti.”

“What… that’s north of here?” 

I nodded.

“My boy works here. Maybe you’ve met him—Daunte?” As she spoke Taryn made a lot of eye contact. Her eyes, a dark chocolate brown, mesmerized me, making me want to dig in to the minutiae of her life.

“Sure. One of the ushers. Seems like a good kid.” I didn’t have to lie.

“I give him a hard time. But he is good. I’m proud of him.”

“I was an usher when I was his age. It’s a good job to have in high school… fun…being around movies. All my friends were jealous.”

“Oh, so that’s why he likes it so much! You know what, he’s dying to learn how to thread the projectors.”

“Oh, I’ll show him.”

“That would be sweet of you.”

Walt, Friday Morning, Day 10  
I woke up around 9:30am. I was worn-out after staying up waiting for Saul to come home. I made some breakfast and then sat down with the phone to search the news. Seeing that CNN logo made me feel like I knew what was going on. I knew it was an illusion, but it still felt good. I watched the streaming feed for a little while, but as usual the network had chosen to follow a low-relevance, high drama story, this one involving nine-year old twins, a boy and a girl, who disappeared while going door to door trying to raise funds for the boy’s hockey team. They were impossibly cute. 

The biggest tragedy for me: the children were from New Mexico. My news story would have stern competition and therefore less coverage. It would be even riskier to take any solace in details left unmentioned. No mention of Skyler would not mean that they weren’t harassing her and intimidating her with some animalistic approach akin to torture. No mention of $80 million would not mean they weren’t searching for it. 

There was nothing streaming on CNN, nothing in a search of news stories. Next I checked out _The Albuquerque Journal_. Here there was a story about me. I was mentioned as a person of interest in the search for Hank and his partner Gomez. Titled “Search Continues for Missing Agents,” it was a small item, focused on Hank and Gomie. My heart wrenched as I thought about Marie. Jack Welker was going to have to pay for what he did. I had some ideas…

Once I finished scouring the internet for news from home, I turned to more casual pursuits. I looked up the films that Saul told me about and read a few reviews. Next I checked the movie listing at White Bear Lake Theatre. It all panned out; he wasn’t making it up, though I wouldn’t have put it past him.

I was antsy now. I had nothing to do and I would be home alone all weekend. I took a look at the groceries that Saul had purchased. It looked like we had the makings of spaghetti so I found some recipes online and decided I would make a nice, slow cook pot of sauce. I needed to be nicer to the guy. His main sin had been, had always been, that he was squirrelly and hard to control. But as far as I knew he hadn’t violated my trust; he had only tested boundaries. He would learn that those boundaries were rock solid with strong consequences for trying to breach them. But for now I could give the guy some slack.

I set about preparing the sauce. I found a knife for cutting the onions. It was a little dull, but I was able to slice through the onions easily enough. The knife got me thinking, there were probably a dozen implements throughout the house that posed a threat to me. I would have to sweep the house of possible weapons, which begged the question: What was Saul’s ultimate end game? 

When I asked him to come with me I thought he’d do it on the basis of our relationship—he always wanted to be my consigliere, well here was his chance. But it appeared he felt trapped with me, which is a shame because then I wasn’t getting his best thinking. He had become somewhat reserved. I had to drag ideas out of him and even then they were just anxiety-tinged and superficial.

So what did he want? Freedom—as in no jail—but he also wanted freedom from me. If I wanted to maintain Saul’s cooperation I would have to execute an elaborate plan of control. Ideally, I wouldn’t squelch Saul’s creativity in the process, but at this point my first priority had to be control.

Saul, Friday Night, Day 10  
I was relieved to arrive home at 12:25am that night. I had told Walt that I would generally be home around 12:30am and I didn’t need any more drama. I was physically tired, but buzzing at the same time. I had passed the test, navigating all the complex tasks of Thursday and Friday. With all the films set up correctly, the rest of the week should be cake.

Walt had made spaghetti and he stayed up to eat with me. I was surprised that he was adapting his dinner plans around my schedule. In a conversational tone, he asked me about my day. I shared with him my professional victory. I almost expected him to mock me for it. After all, what did it matter, me finding success at some inconsequential job.

“Let’s drink a toast,” he said, raising his glass of wine, “to strong covers.”

“To strong covers,” I repeated, clinking his glass. “Oh. I have something to show you,” I said with a silly enthusiasm. “That’s Tom Hanks in _Captain Phillips_ ,” I said, laying the frames I’d cut on the table. “And here’s the projector and the platter system I told you about,” I said showing him my phone.

“Evidence that you actually work at the movie theatre… that’s thoughtful of you, Saul. Thanks.” He seemed earnest.

“Well, I’m all about the evidence. Besides, I figure it must be difficult for you to sit in this house all day long… thought I’d give you a glance at the outside world.”

“And I now have my own link to that world,” he said, touching his phone. “There was an article about me in the Journal today.”

I swallowed hard. Walt, on the other hand, didn’t seem too concerned. He pulled up the article and read it aloud. This wasn’t good. It meant that the feds would be coming around my office, trying to get a hold of me to locate Walt. Pretty soon I’d be ‘missing,’ and then a ‘person of interest’ too.

“How do you find these articles?” I asked, setting down my fork.

“What do you mean ‘how’? I search.” Walt was finished eating. He arched his fingers in front of him.

“But how do you search? You use search terms?”

“Of course. Walter White. Blue Sky. Crystal Meth. $80 million. Jesse Pinkman…”

“That’s dangerous. The drug terms and the money, for example, connect you with the criminal enterprise. Wouldn’t look good in court.”

“Court? I’m not worried about that.”

“Well, there’s also the possibility that the feds use the search terms to locate you.”

“Is that legal?”

I shook my head, “I don’t even know how feasible it is. But what I do know is that after 9/11 the feds know when you scratch your ass if they want to. And ‘person of interest’ means they want to.”

Walt hung his head.

“Don’t search the news. Browse through it. And don’t ever type ‘Walter White’,” I advised. Or ‘Saul Goodman’ I thought.


	6. Arsenic and Old Lace

Saul, Saturday Afternoon, Day 11 through Tuesday, Day 14

Friday had been flawless. That meant Saturday should be as well. The only thing that could go wrong now was a threading mistake, so I took great care with the projectors. I estimated that I had cut my threading time in half over the last couple of days, but I knew I couldn’t get complacent. My prowess in the booth meant that I could spend more time on the floor getting to know the staff. Mostly, I was interested in Taryn. She seemed tethered to the box office so I spent a good deal of the time between shows standing behind her at the box office window.

I took my breaks with Taryn…

“How’d you hurt your knee? Was that your brother again?” She was scary incisive.

“No,” I replied, thinking quickly. “I had a bad knee already; I took a bad fall on the ice one winter.” I said, smiling sheepishly at the reality: a dozen falls over a couple of winters… “and then I just twisted it again… a clutzy accident on the stairs.”

She caught the meaning behind the smile. “Are you telling a fib?”

“I’m just embarrassed. I was trying to manufacture a better story, but that’s the truth… An errant sock sent me tumbling down the stairs while I was carrying the laundry,” I expanded upon the lie. It wasn’t that far from the truth. The whack of a vacuum cleaner wand sent me tumbling down the stairs while I was carrying my life’s possessions.

 

Over the next few days, I began to establish a routine, the theme of which was: stay away from Walt as much as possible. Work days were about thirteen hours long so I only saw Walt at breakfast or dinner. On my days off, I took to the streets to go “shopping”, well I did do some shopping. I also went to the library and perused the paltry offerings. And I drove, just drove around randomly exploring, listening to KQRS, the local classic rock station. To my surprise, Walt didn’t seem to mind my absences. He gave me a long list of supplies he needed and seemed pleased with my purchases. I awaited the return of Hurricane Walt. I felt like I was in the eye of the storm, a void where the energy dissipates momentarily in a cruel trick. But I knew the back end of the storm was coming, I just didn’t know how or when.

Walt, Tuesday Afternoon, Day 14  
My supply orders arrived on Tuesday. All of them, at the same time. Fortunately, Saul was out shopping when the mail carrier came by. I was flooded by excitement; it was like opening my first chemistry set. There were the pill press and pill ingredients, the colorant and the padlock. I quickly took the packages downstairs to a cabinet that I’d found, and locked them up with the padlock. I would have to wait until the next day, Wednesday, to play with my new toys.

Walt, Wednesday Afternoon, Day 15  
I removed my purchases from the basement cabinet and organized everything on the workbench. I’d been fantasizing about this moment for two weeks. Now I would execute the most devastating part of my control plan.

I retrieved the wood that I had seen and grabbed some foil. In the fireplace, I set a small section of 2X4 on a large piece of foil. I realized I’d need a respirator and I kicked myself for not having ordered one. I went upstairs and rummaged through Saul’s things. I needed a t-shirt. I found a couple of old rock t-shirts with band names and tour dates on them, but those he might notice missing. Finally, I found what I wanted: a plain white one. 

Returning to the living room, I took the t-shirt and wrapped it around my face, covering my mouth and nose and using the arms to tie it into place. The t-shirt smelled like Saul. It had traces of his cologne—the old cologne that he used to slather on to complement those ridiculous suits. As Paul Dobbs, he had changed colognes and lowered the volume considerably. Smart man: scent is our strongest memory.

I lit the 2x4 on fire, and through blowing and coaxing, I kept that fire going until the wood started to turn to ash. The ash fell obediently into my foil. After I had a tablespoon of ash, I put the fire out and left the ash to cool in the fireplace.

Old treated wood has an interesting property: it’s preserved with a chemical called CCA or chromated copper arsenate. When you burn it, arsenic is released in the smoke and ash. Too bad for Saul; it’s that easy.

The next step was to make the pills. I would use the hand-held pill press that I purchased to shape the binder, filler, colorant and arsenic into a pill. I had checked the pill shape to be sure that I had ordered the correct size moldings. Next I started working with the blue and red colorant. Mixing the two together and, after a lot of experimenting, I got a pretty good match on the purplish-blue color of the Xanax. I went upstairs and removed the wood stump from the fireplace and bagged it in a gallon ziploc. Then I folded up the foil so that no ash could escape during transport and I returned to the basement.

I began to combine the ingredients. Because I didn’t know how much poison to use, I created two different ‘doses’: low and high. Finally it was time to press the powder into pill form using the press. I compared my first creation with the sample pill and it was a very good facsimile. The last step was to cut the score on one side of the pill. The one thing that I couldn’t do was to imprint the “Xanax 1.0” stamp. I would have to ride my luck that Saul would continue to mindlessly pop these pills. 

I followed this process to painstakingly manufacture forty pills, separated into two groups. I put a dozen low dose pills in a baggie in my pocket and then put the rest of my supply and all of my equipment and ingredients back in the cabinet and padlocked it.

Pill making had taken the entire afternoon; now I wanted to check the news. I was in for a big surprise. My story had made it to CNN. It was kind of a relief that I finally had shown up on CNN. It was inevitable, really, but something I’d been dreading. Now that it was here I felt calm. Fortunately for me they were using an old photo: the one that Skyler and Walter Junior used when I went missing in a ‘fugue’ state. I had a full head of hair and a big mustache. No beard. They weren’t saying a lot, just that I was wanted in the disappearance of Hank and Gomez and that I was suspected of being the notorious drug kingpin, Heisenberg. An article in the Albuquerque Journal went into much more detail about Heisenberg, going into descriptions of Blue Sky, the search for the missing money, and an interesting mention concerning my car, found with bullet holes near To’hajiilee. They also said that Jesse was missing. Saul’s name came up: “There was no immediate comment from the office of Saul Goodman, White’s attorney. Authorities suggested that they are concerned that Goodman may be missing as well.” Saul was going to freak out. 

I had hoped to switch the pills that night, but to do so would require sneaking into Saul’s bedroom while he slept. I could think of no other way of getting at those pills given that he carries them in his pocket at all times. I had a feeling he wasn’t going to sleep much after he heard about the news.

Saul, Wednesday Afternoon, Day 15  
Since it was the slowest day, I decided I would perform regular maintenance on the projectors on Wednesdays. I created a maintenance checklist and asked Lacey if I could use the computer to type it up and print out copies for each projector. She seemed impressed by my initiative and gladly consented. I went into the office between shows to make up my lists. I also had an idea to keep an hours log for each projector so that we could forecast when the Xenon bulb was going to go. I aimed to have no cancelled shows.  
While I was working at the computer, I saw a note scratched in Lacey’s handwriting: “All is lost, Counselor.” I freaked out. What the fuck was that? Did Lacey somehow know my true identity? Why was she leaving me a cryptic note? Was she trying to scare me or was it a friendly warning? I was unsettled the rest of the day.

 

That evening Daunte came in to work a shift. I thought teaching him to thread would be a good distraction from the day’s worries. I threaded up one of the projectors while he watched. Then it was Daunte’s turn.

He was confronted with a series of sprockets and gates, a series of decisions about which way to turn, how much slack to impart. His hands betrayed a slight tremor as he approached each gate. But he was smart, checking each choice by gauging the tautness of the film. When finished, the film traced out a pattern like a slalom skier, zigzagging back and forth, looping motions followed by straight drives. 

Any mistakes were costly. They’d be etched in the film, showing up as the characteristic lines that blight an old reel. Any dust particles, or fingerprints, would show up like bright spores, flashes of light on the screen, bursting like fireworks. Or, if on the soundtrack, they’d make popping noises, similar to the effect of dust on an LP. Daunte had to factor in all these potential sins as he navigated the complex array of gears and sprockets. 

As he made his fledgling attempts, I corrected him at each pass, trying to imprint in his brain the fluid flow of a properly threaded projector. Daunte did well, learning quickly. Still, the process took a long time. I had to send him back to his usher responsibilities after he finished just two of the projectors. Beaming, he fist-bumped me, thanking me for the preliminary lesson. I promised him more anytime he could break free.

I made it home by 12:15am. As usual, Walt was up and had made dinner, a French stew. The stew was delicious, but right away he announced, “I have some potentially upsetting news.” At that moment, I couldn’t fathom what could be worse than having my cover blown. I had spent the day mentally packing and planning my escape in my little Ford Ranger. Would Walt want to risk coming with me? Or risk staying behind? And if he did, how would he survive without his handmaiden?

Walt told me that his picture was on CNN. Then he spoiled my appetite: I had been mentioned in The Albuquerque Journal. He read the news item. “What are we going to do, Walt?” I asked him, then cringed at having used his name.

If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. “Hey, don’t worry about it. This is to be expected. Of course they are going to notice we’re missing. At least they’re not showing your photo.”

“Yet.”

“And when they do, you look nothing like your Saul Goodman days.”

“I think they might be on to me at work.” I don’t know why I told him.

“What?”

“I found a note that said, ‘All is lost, Counselor.’”

Walt looked shocked, but then his look of concern morphed into a wily smile. He got up and retrieved the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Thumbing through the paper he landed on the movie ads. He placed the page in front of me on the table.

“What do you see? Counselor?”

I scanned the page. The first thing I noticed, a film called “The Counselor.” The realization smacked me in the face; I’d been staring all week at a poster for a Robert Redford movie called “All is Lost.” I laughed awkwardly, embarrassed at my stupidity. I couldn’t look at Walt; I just stared at the ads. I reached for another Xanax. I’d been popping them all day long. I was supposed to have one or two a day, and this was maybe my fifth. Walt did that hair ruffling thing again. I found it a little creepy and vaguely reassuring, but mostly creepy.

“You’ve got to learn to calm down,” he said. 

 

Saul, Thursday Afternoon, Day 16  
The day would be busy. Three new films coming and three leaving. I needed the busyness after the prior day’s red alerts, both real and imagined.

In the afternoon before the new films arrived I set about creating the trailer reels for each of the three new films. I was making my selections when I came across it; it was like seeing a roach in the spoonful of food you’re about to bite into. A trailer with “Saul” scrawled across the label. I began to sweat, my own scent unfamiliar to me as I had recently switched from an aftershave to a cologne. With trembling hands, I unwound the film and examined the frames in the dim booth light. Now the clicking of the projector, normally so comforting, seemed to be mocking me, like the ticking of a clock.

I saw from the frames that the film was actually called _Sal_. It was a James Franco film about the actor Sal Mineo of _Rebel Without a Cause_ fame who met his fate stabbed in an alley. I let out an audible sigh. But who wrote “Saul” on the trailer? It had to be Lacey, yes? Was it intentional? An innocent mistake? A fluke, like the pairing of the two film titles _All is Lost_ and _The Counselor_? Was somebody trying to send me a message? If so, what could they know? I’d show that I wasn’t intimidated. Even though I was. I dropped _Sal_ in the trailer reel for _12 Years a Slave_ right after _All is Lost_ and _The Counselor_.

Walt, Thursday Night/Friday Morning, Day 16-17  
Saul came home at 4:15am. He’d told me he’d be late. I asked him if he still wanted to eat and to my delight he said he did. I feed him beer and tacos laced with some benadryl. I tried to engage him in conversation.

“I’ve had a really long day, Frank. Could we talk tomorrow?” The benadryl was having the intended effect. He could hardly make it through dinner. By 4:30am he was heading off to bed.

At around 5:30am I crept up to Saul’s room. I was tired myself, but motivation kept me sharp. I had a small candle burning in the hallway and was risking my EMHS cover by using a small flashlight. I tried the doorknob. The bastard had locked the door. I went back downstairs. The candle cast long ominous shadows that were unsettling even though I knew the source. I studied the lock in my own room. Looked like something easily opened by a letter opener, or a knife.

I selected a small kitchen knife and returned to Saul’s bedroom door. The lock slipped open without a sound. As far as I could tell, Saul was sleeping peacefully. I thought about my alibi should he wake up. I could tell him that he was having a nightmare, that he called out during his sleep. It was a weak story and fortunately unnecessary. His pants were on the floor and the Xanax was in the pocket. There were five pills left in the bottle. I replaced Saul’s Xanax with my own “low” stock. I would wait to see what effect this would have. Saul turned in his sleep. I froze and remained still for a full minute until I was satisfied that he hadn’t awakened.

Saul, Friday Afternoon, Day 17  
I came in a little early since it was Friday and I wanted to check things out before the films had their first screenings. Lacey seemed a bit frazzled and was relieved to see me.

“You’re early. Thanks. My dad is coming tonight.” Lacey’s dad, Mr. Alvesson, owned the theatre.

“You’re going to be fine. Everything will run smooth. The movies all played great last night,” I told her.

She locked the door behind me. “Oh! It’s just that he makes me so nervous. He’s such a fucking perfectionist!”

I wanted to correct her language like she was my daughter. She seemed too innocent to be talking that way.

“I want him to meet you. I want you to show him the booth and all the great things you’ve been doing,” she said. I followed her as she performed her building inspection.

“Is that a good idea? How’s my face looking?” I paused to let her take a good look at me.

“All’s I can see is a little trace of a black eye. I don’t think it will be noticeable.”

“Do you want me to wear some make-up or something?”

“No,” she laughed. “A make-up wearing projectionist is _not_ boring…” She was heading up to the booth. “Let’s review your trailer reels. My dad is kind of a freak about coming attractions.”

I showed Lacey clip boards that I created at each of the projectors. When we got to Theatre 2, the big house, I read off the trailers: “ _All is Lost, Counselor, Sal_. I watched her face to see if she betrayed even a trace of recognition. She did not.

Lacey asked me to make a bunch of changes on the basis of her father’s whims. When she left the booth I popped a Xanax and set to work.

 

By the four o’clock show I had flu-like symptoms. It was odd because there had been no onset. It was just wham-o. I had diarrhea and a splitting headache, totally debilitating. Since it came on so fast, I thought maybe it was food poisoning. I wanted to call Walt to see if he had it to, but that could blow our covers. I was debating whether I should stick around to meet Lacey’s father. It would look terrible to go home sick but I wasn’t sure I’d be fit to meet him. I didn’t want to leave the security of the booth, where I had my own private bathroom, to try to find Lacey. I gave her a call on the house phone and asked her if she could come upstairs.

I could tell by her expression that I looked bad. “I think I have food poisoning or something… I’ll stick around if you need me, but I think maybe I should go.”

“I hate to ask, Paul…”

“No, if you need me, I’ll gut it out. What time is he coming?”

“He’ll probably be here around 6:30.” 

“Do you have any medicine? Aspirin? Pepto Bismol?” 

She brought me the meds. After Lacey left, I took my coat to use as a pillow and laid down on the floor. That’s how bad I felt. I didn’t care that it was the floor. In fact it felt kind of cool and good. I slept soundly until the four o’clock shows wrapped up. I got up unsteadily and threaded for seven o’clock. I was bleary-eyed and needed to use a flashlight to make sure I got the films in frame.

Mr. Alvesson was a tall, bald man in his sixties. There was sort of a fake congeniality about him, and an intensity; I could feel it in his hand shake. I had been sweating profusely and I hoped my hand wasn’t clammy. “Paul, nice to meet you,” he said, “Lacey has been saying nice things about you.”

“I’m very happy to be here, Mr. Alvesson,” I pandered, though it was true. “You have a beautiful theatre here.” And he did. The building was generously sprinkled with Art Deco details. The lobby was maroon and silver with gorgeous carpeting featuring an elaborate geometric pattern. The ceiling of the big house had a blue and gold sun ray motif.  
“Let’s see some of these improvements you’ve been making in the booth. You know, I have ten other theatres to manage. I’m always looking for best practices.”

I showed him my clip boards and told him about some other ideas I had. My head was bursting with the worst headache I ever had. Every word that I got out was an effort. I finally had to stop talking while Alvesson contented himself with an inspection of my projectors.

“Nice operation you have here, Paul,” he concluded, shaking my hand again. He seemed to notice my eye. I know my hand was clammy this time. “Nothing to be nervous about.” He made a sort of snorting laughing sound. “You’re doing a fine job.”

At 8pm, after the seven o’clock ticket sales, Taryn came to the projection booth. She brought with her a soup. “Lacey told me you’re under the weather,” she said. I was huddled in a chair, my coat draped over me. “Jesus, Paul, you should go home.”

“But Alvesson’s here.” 

“You can’t make a good impression when you’re sick as a dog.” 

“I’ve already made my impression.” 

“Then GO.”

“Maybe after the seven o’clock shows finish. Alvesson is still down there. What’s he watching? _12 Years a Slave_?”

“Mmm mmm mm,” Taryn responded with a sing-song rhythm. “I brought you some soup.” She held out a styrofoam cup which I recognized from the Greek diner next door.  
“That’s brilliant of you. Thanks, but I don’t think I can keep it down.”

“What’s wrong with you? Flu, food poisoning?”

“Something like that.”

 

I stuck it out to thread the nine o’clock show and then, mercifully, Lacey let me go home.

Walt, Friday Afternoon, Day 17  
It was the big day and right from the start of it, I anticipated Saul’s return home. He had the dosed pills in his possession and I was anxious to see the effects of the poison. I went through my regular routine of checking the various news sources on the web. It was slower going now as I followed Saul’s advice and no longer entered search terms. This meant that I had to scan through all the regional and national news on CNN and the Albuquerque Journal. I also included the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in my reading to see if they had picked up my story and just to get a sense of the place.

I kept wondering about how Saul was faring. To get my mind off of it, I got out the chess board. I wanted to teach him chess—seemed like it would be a good distraction for both us. I didn’t know if he was up to the intellectual challenge but he seemed like a smart enough guy when he applied himself. I think he suffered from ADD in addition to anxiety, so he might not have the disposition for chess. For me, the challenge of chess was a stimulant. I set up the chess board to mimic the first problem in the book and I got to work. Chess kept me occupied for a couple of hours until it was time to cook dinner. I had decided to make lasagna.

Walt, Friday Night, Day 17  
At around 9:30 I heard Saul’s truck in the driveway. This was a good sign; he was coming home early. The moment he entered the house I could see that I had given him enough arsenic. He looked haggard and pale.

“Hey, buddy, you’re home early… that’s great because I tried out a lasagna recipe and…” he held his hand up for me to stop.

“Nothing for me. I think I have food poisoning, or…” He squinted as if the dim candlelight was hurting him. “How are you feeling?” he asked me.

“Fine, fine. I’m great. What’s wrong?” I did my best to feign concern.

“The flu then… I think I have the flu. You should stay away from me.”

“ _Non-sense_ ,” I said waving my hands. “I’ll make you some chicken soup.”

“No. Thank you… I’m just going to sleep,” he said, heading to the stairs.

“Saul, before you go, I think you should know…” he stopped and turned around to face me, worry flooding his face. “Your picture was in the Albuquerque Journal today.”

“Aw, Jesus,” he said, grabbing a hold of a chair to steady himself.


	7. Falling Down

Saul, Friday Night, Day 17  
I got up to my room and headed straight for bed. I desperately wanted to check out the news to see what Walt was talking about. But I couldn’t muster the energy. Besides, my brain felt like it was pushing against the boundaries of my skull; I didn’t think I’d be able to focus my eyes on the phone.

I slept fitfully. I had diffuse nightmares that left me trembling and sweating. And terrible stomach pains, although the diarrhea had calmed. In the middle of the night I went looking for some acetaminophen for my head. After that I got a few hours rest.

Saul, Saturday Morning, Day 18  
Walt shook me awake, and as he came into focus, I saw a knife.

“Are you here to put me out of my misery?” I asked. I wasn’t joking and I wasn’t scared. My head hurt too much.

“Time for work. Are you up for it?”

“Hell, no. Hand me my cell phone?” I gave Lacey a call. She didn’t sound too happy, but I reminded her that we didn’t want anyone else to get sick. She pointed out that I’d probably infected her father with the handshakes. Great.

Walt let me be and I fell back to sleep until 3pm. Groggily, and still in my pajamas, I came downstairs. I was feeling a little better. I took a Xanax to calm my nerves and another acetaminophen for my head. Walt was playing chess. “Do you think you could make that soup you were talking about?” I hadn’t eaten in nearly 24 hours.

“Glad to see you’re up,” Walt said rising from the table. “I already made the soup…”

“I’ll get it. You should stay away from me. Your immune system is compromised, right?”

“I’ll be fine. Sit down. You look like hell.”

“Anymore news from home?” I asked wincing in anticipation of the answer.

“Same as yesterday.”

“And you said my photo’s in the Journal… or did I dream that?”

“Saul Goodman’s photo’s in the Journal, not Paul Dobbs. It says that you’re missing, presumed dead.” Walt started browsing through his history and handed me the phone.

“And how do they presume I died?” I took a look at the picture. It was a screen grab from a “Better Call Saul” commercial. I did look totally different. Each morning when I looked at myself in the mirror I was tempted to shave off my stupid beard; I was grateful that I hadn’t. Walt, too, was beginning to look different. His hair was coming in, albeit a little patchy, and he was filling out his beard. Despite his behavior he was _looking_ like a nicer person.

“It doesn’t say how you might have died. They imply that I killed you.” He sounded mad about the implication. I wasn’t sure if he was jealous that I was supposed to be dead or offended that he was supposed to be the one who did it. Probably the former.

Walt, Saturday Morning, Day 18  
Saul normally came downstairs at around 9:30am. When he hadn’t roused by 10:45 I went to check on him. I knocked on the door and hearing no reply used a kitchen knife to open the lock. Saul was sound asleep. I called his name—nothing. I had to shake him rather hard to wake him.

He was pale and he squinted due to the late morning light escaping through the blinds. He held his hand up to shield his eyes. He wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t going anywhere. I wasn’t sure he was going to get out of that bed at all. I felt a little nervous; it looked like I might have gone too far with the dosing. I just wanted to incapacitate him a little bit—make him feel crappy so that he’d put off any escape plans for the next day, perpetually. But he’d consumed too much arsenic; I feared that he might want to go to the hospital.

That’s when it struck me what I was doing wrong. Saul was probably supposed to take only one or two Xanaxes a day. In reality he took much more. It was impossible to predict. He might take up to five pills on a given day. And taking five of my pills might kill him. He went back to sleep and I headed down to my workshop. I created a new batch of super-low dose pills, about a third of what I had used in the original low dose pills. In Saul’s state of disability it was easy to replace his pills with the new set.

Saul, Saturday Afternoon, Day 18  
The soup was delicious. But I couldn’t keep it down. I went back to sleep around 4:30pm. I didn’t sleep well… I had intense stomach cramps and the terrible headache continued to hound me, untouched by any painkillers. 

Saul, Sunday Morning, Day 19  
I slept all the way through until morning. I woke up around 10:30am and I was feeling better. Not a lot better—if Saturday was a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10, Sunday was maybe a 3. Work still seemed like an impossibility. I called Lacey to tell her I wasn’t going to make it in. It’s a good thing that I had been working my ass off at that place, otherwise I think my job would have been at risk.

“Has anyone else come down with it?” I asked, thinking of her father.

“No, just you. Look, I’ve got a lot to do…”

“Sure you go.” She would probably have to do all the threading.

I had some soup and read the news from Albuquerque. Same as what Walt told me yesterday. I went back upstairs to do some reading and dozing. I was asleep at 5pm when Walt knocked on my door. 

“There is a black woman at the door,” he said, agitated.

“What does she look like?”

“I don’t know. I saw her through the peephole.”

I quickly changed into sweats and a henley shirt and opened my bedroom door. Walt had a gun in his hand.

“What the fuck, Walt?!”

“We don’t know who that woman is. Whether she’s alone. What she wants,” Walt hissed. “She could be the police.”

“I don’t think they’re gonna come like that. Anyway, I think I know who it is… someone from work.”

I went downstairs. Walt stood back, looming on the staircase. I looked through the peephole and sure enough it was Taryn.

“Hello! What a pleasant surprise,” I said when I’d opened the door.

“Hi, Paul,” she smiled sweetly.

“I’d invite you in, but I wouldn’t want to get you sick. How did you find me?”

“Lacey gave me your address. I hope you don’t mind.” I didn’t. Normally I would have gone ballistic over privacy rights, but this particular invasion of my privacy had resulted in the angel of mercy at my doorstep right when I needed her.

“No… it’s great to see you. What brings you by?” She handed me a couple of grocery bags. “It’s TheraFlu and such. And I made some pumpkin soup and corn bread for when you’re up to it.”

“You’re brilliant, Taryn. Thanks so much.” 

“You’re welcome. How are you feeling?”

“Like shit, but a tiny bit less so than yesterday.”

“Well, you look like it, baby,” she laughed softly, her face lighting up. “That pumpkin soup will get you back on your feet. It’s my grandma’s recipe.”

Walt, Sunday Morning, Day 19   
Saul came downstairs around 11am. He was still looking terrible. His shoulders were drawn in, his face seemed gaunt. He wasn’t talkative, which, for Saul, is the ultimate litmus test in how he’s feeling. He had some more of my soup; I was pleased that he liked it.

I had slipped him the new mix of pills the previous day. I was dying to know how much Xanax he had taken in the last 24 hours and whether he’d gotten any of the dosed pills. He told me he felt better but it wasn’t evident to me.

Saul went back to bed after lunch. I checked the news. It seemed that my story on CNN was more prominent, which was disturbing. And Saul was being mentioned on CNN now. I played chess for awhile and then took a nap myself.

At 5pm, a black woman came to the door. I was quite alarmed, thinking she might be a cop or a fed, though it would be strange for a fed to show up alone. It turned out she was someone who worked with Saul. She brought groceries which was great, solved a problem for us. Nonetheless, I was irate. 

“How could you let someone come to our house!” I yelled at Saul once she was gone. 

“I didn’t know she was coming! She got the address at work.”

I walked right up to him, face to face, “This better not…” I started coughing and couldn’t finish the sentence. He limped away and I noticed he had stopped using the cane.

Fifteen minutes went by and I simmered down. Saul had left the groceries in the hallway where I had confronted him. I took them to the kitchen and unpacked. It was a cornucopia: fruits and vegetables, tea, oatmeal, turkey, eggs, soup. Saul’s friend had also included some medications, Tylenol, NyQuil, and TheraFlu. 

I returned to the living room where he was sitting on the couch staring into space. “She brought some NyQuil and TheraFlu. Do you want any?” I said.

“ _Her_ name is Taryn,” Saul responded.

“Do you want some?”

“What’s TheraFlu for?” 

I examined the bottle, “Nasal congestion, sore throat, cough, and body aches.”

“I don’t think I have the flu. I’m not at all congested,” he said.

“What do you think it is then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s food poisoning but it’s weird because no one else got it. And I had the same things as other people.”

Saul, Sunday Evening, Day 19  
After I was awakened by Taryn’s visit, I decided to stay up and have dinner. I had mixed feelings about Taryn stopping by; I was thrilled that she thought of me, and getting the food and supplies was a godsend. However, I didn’t like her coming so close to Walt. And like an idiot I volunteered her name. There are probably about as many Taryns in the Twin Cities as there are Sauls.

I focused on the warm and protected feeling that I got the moment I realized it was Taryn at the door, bringing goods for me. Unsolicited. It felt better than any other moment in the past three, four weeks. She was a real sweetheart.

I asked Walt if he would prepare me some tea and heat up Taryn’s pumpkin soup. The soup turned out to be delicious. How couldn’t it have? I was smitten. 

There were a couple of books on the table. “Beginner’s Chess” and “Advanced Chess Challenges.” I started reading the beginner’s book, but it took too much concentration and increased the intensity of my headache. 

“Do you want anything more to eat?” Walt called from the kitchen.

“What do we have?” Walt came into the living room and rattled off everything that Taryn had brought.

“That’s quite a friend you have there. You’ll have to tell me more about her.” I nodded at Walt’s suggestion though there was nothing I’d rather do less.

“How about a turkey sandwich?” 

“Will do,” he said with a forced cheeriness. Less than an hour ago, he want to knock my head off.

“What are these chess books,” I asked him. “You’ve got skill levels on both ends of the spectrum.”

“I can play chess with myself using the “Challenge” book. And, when you’re up to it, I thought I could teach you to play.”

“Me? No. Monopoly is more my speed.”

“We can play that too, I saw it downstairs. But chess… I think it will be a great learning experience for us both and a great way to pass the time.”

 

I had to call the theatre to tell Taryn not to come to the house anymore. I waited until she would have have down time.

She answered the phone. 

“Hi, Taryn. It’s me, Paul.”

“Hi, sweetie, how are you feeling? I’m worried about you.”

“I’ll be all right, just a bad case of the flu.”

“I think you should go to the doctor.” I wished I could.

“The flu is a virus. Nothing the doctor can do.”

“But you could be getting dehydrated. There’s some Gatorade in the groceries.” 

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am for you bringing over the food and the meds. You’re a lifesaver. I just had the soup; it was heavenly.”

“I’m happy to help.”

“Listen, I don’t know how to say this but, you can’t come to the house anymore.” 

“Oh, sweetie, is it your brother? I caught a glimpse of him standing behind you, lurking in the shadows.”

“Yeah. He doesn’t want any visitors. But I’d like to see you,” I added quickly. “Can I take you out for dinner when I’ve licked this thing?”

“I would like that very much.”

I wrapped up the call with Taryn.

“Frank, we have some Gatorade, right? Can I get some of that? I need to keep hydrated.”

He delivered me the sandwich and drink. I headed off to bed around 8:30pm. My head felt like it was swirling, but I think that was a good thing; I was completely entranced with Taryn.

 

Walt, Monday Morning, Day 20  
I got up at 7:45am and found Saul in the dining room eating some oatmeal. I was shocked to see him in full on Saul Goodman attire, including that stupid pinky ring. He had on a bright blue shirt and a yellow tie with geometric patterns. He was even wearing a suit jacket and the Wayfarer ribbon.

“What’s going on, Paul?” 

“Who?” he said, looking confused.

“ _Saul_. What the _fuck_ is going on?” I sat down next to him.

“I have to get back to work. I haven’t been to the office in ages.” He kept shoveling the oatmeal into his mouth. Some fell on his tie and he didn’t seem to notice.

“Saul, this isn’t funny.”

“Funny. No, this is not a joke.” He had a vacant look in his eyes and was staring at a fixed point on the wall paper. “I don’t feel good, Walt.”

“I know, buddy.”

“Do you think they can hear us?” He glanced at me surreptitiously.

“Who?”

“Those snails on the wall,” he said, wiping away sweat from his forehead with a napkin.

I studied the wall. The wallpaper had a pattern to it, a flower motif. There was nothing snail-like about it. 

“There aren’t any snails.”

“I’ve been getting a lot of questions about you. I have to get to the office and talk to the feds.”

His bizarre behavior was definitely arsenic induced; delirium is a symptom of acute poisoning. Nonetheless, it was disturbing and I was tempted to haul off and smack him.

“There will be no talking to the feds.” I touched his forearm and he pulled it away like an insolent child.

“No. They want to know where you are. They want to know what you did with Hank and Jesse.” 

I slapped him. I didn’t mean to. 

“ _No feds, Saul_. There will be no talking to the feds under any circumstances.”

He started to cry. “They’re going to want to know why I’m sick. What should I tell them?”

“The truth.”

“That you’re poisoning me?” That was like a punch in the gut. I tried to remain neutral, unresponsive.

“I’m not poisoning you, Saul.” I held up my hands, palms exposed. “You have the flu, or maybe food poisoning, remember?”

“Right. I have poisoning.”

“No, it’s something you ate. Or it’s the flu.” He was reaching into his pocket. “Did you take the TheraFlu?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t think you should have a Xanax right now. They are contraindicated,” I said, making it up.

“What?”

“You shouldn’t take them together,” I explained. “I’ll make you some chamomile tea instead.”

“Walt doesn’t like me to take Xanax,” he concluded. “There are things missing from the box,” he said.

“What box?” I asked. He squinted at me.

“ _My_ box. Has been molested. Two things are missing. One thing was watched.”

“What box, Saul?”

“Where I keep my ring,” he said, showing me his fingers.

He lowered his voice conspiratorially, “They took my passport and birth certificate. And they watched my video.” I felt like I had walked into the middle of his nightmare.

“Maybe it’s the snails,” I suggested.

“The snails are poisoning me. Yes, that makes sense.” Then, lowering his voice again, he asked, “will you kill them for me?”

“Yes, I’ll kill the snails. Where are they?”

“Right there,” he said, pointing at me. My stomach churned.

I considered getting Saul to the hospital. I wasn’t trying to kill the man. When he went back upstairs, I did a little research on arsenic. In addition to delirium, acute arsenic poisoning causes tachycardia, hypotension, shock, seizures and potentially coma. I was aiming at creating a chronic low grade condition. Acute symptoms meant that I was missing the mark.

Saul, Monday Afternoon, Day 20  
I awoke at around 1pm. I still felt horrible; in fact I think I was worse than the day before. I panicked for a moment, thinking that I was late for work, but then I remembered it was my day off. 

I’d had crazy dreams. I was at my Saul Goodman office. Something about snails crawling around on the ceiling and walls. The snails told me, “I made you sick.” The feds were there and they were interrogating me about Walt. The snails crawled across the floor. These snails were huge, perhaps eight inches in diameter, pale green in color. I was staring at the snails, thinking that everyone could see them. Craig, the security guy, was there putting up movie posters: _All is Lost_ , _The Counselor_ , and _Sal_. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want the feds to see.

One of the feds asked me “Where are Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez?”

I replied, “ask the snails.”

They laughed and asked “what snails?” Then they put me in a straight jacket made of canvas lined with foil.

The snails said to me, “ask them what they’ve done with Kim and Chuck.”

 

I got out of bed and found that I was very unsteady on my feet. I put some clothes on and went downstairs.

“Hey, buddy,” Walt said. I hate it when he speaks to me that way. It was so obsequious. “Do you want something to eat?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Some of Taryn’s soup and her corn bread.” Walt prepared the food and brought it to me in the dining room. 

“What do you want for dinner?” he asked.

“I don’t know, omelets maybe?”

“Sounds good.” He sat down across from me. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit.”

“So tell me about Taryn. She’s a good looking woman.”

“Yes, she is.”

“You have a thing for her?”

“I do.” God, that was a stupid thing to say. I wanted so badly to gloat about my budding relationship with her. But I should have kept my mouth shut to protect her from this monster. Though I knew that if I said nothing, Walt would get mad; he’d find a way to make me talk. “She’s the cashier at work. She’s got a great sense of humor. She laughs at my jokes.”

“Are there many blacks in White Bear Lake?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m guessing she lives in St. Paul?”

“Minneapolis,” I lied.

“Are you going to take her out?”

“I’d like to.”

“I think it’s a fine idea. You go ahead.” I was surprised by his reaction. I thought surely he wouldn’t want me to have friends or, God forbid, a love interest. He’d be too jealous for that. What was he up to?

Saul, Tuesday Afternoon, Day 21  
I awoke around 11:30 and I was feeling much better. I still had a headache and stomachache, but the level of intensity was much reduced. I wanted to run down the stairs and go out and play like a little kid. I thought I might be able to go shopping to replenish supplies. I put on some clothes and went downstairs. Walt was in the living room reading his phone.

“Anything of interest?” I asked.

“What? No.” He paused and looked at me. “You’re looking better!”

“I feel better.”

“Thank God. I was really worried about you, buddy.”

“Yeah?” I found that hard to believe.

“I think you were delirious yesterday… do you remember?”

I thought he was trying to _Gaslight_ me. “I had some crazy dreams,” I admitted.

“I don’t think they were dreams, Saul. You told me you saw a snail. It was talking to you. Remember?”

“I told you about that? When?” I truly didn’t remember. How did he know about my dream?

“Oh, this was early yesterday morning.”

“But I didn’t get up until 1pm,” I said my voice rising.

“You were up around 8am. You were wearing one of your Saul Goodman suits. In fact, you spilled some oatmeal on your tie. Check it out.” I looked at him skeptically. “Go. Go look at your tie. I’ll make you some breakfast.”

Reluctantly, I headed upstairs. Sure enough, I had unceremoniously dumped the suit on the chair. That wasn’t like me, but I could do it if I was feeling sick enough. I found the tie in the tangle of clothes. Walt was right, it was soiled with oatmeal. I brought the tie downstairs with me. What the fuck was I doing wearing that suit? Maybe I didn’t wear the suit, maybe Walt dribbled some oatmeal on my tie. But he did know about the snails. I felt like I was losing my mind.

“Do we have any seltzer water?” I asked Walt as I draped the tie over one of the chairs. I wrote that down on our shopping list.

“I don’t think so… see I told you,” he said, waving his hand at the tie. “Now, since you’re doing better, let’s move on to lighter topics: chess!”

“I don’t know if I’m up for it.”

“Come on! It’ll be fun.”

It took Walt about an hour to explain all the rules to me. I had to create a cheat sheet that outlined all the permissible moves of each type of chess piece. We still hadn’t started our first game when I announced: “I’m going to be heading out now. I need to do some grocery shopping while I still have energy.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“There’s stuff we need and I’m feeling a lot better. Yes, I think it’s a great idea.”

“OK,” he said.

 

Saul, Wed Morning, Day 22  
I rose early in order to return to work. Looking in the mirror I searched for evidence from the attack by Walt. All the bruises seemed to have healed. It brought to mind the beating from Jesse; my nose still hurt from that. I thought about how he accused me of helping to poison Brock Cantillo. That boy’s poisoning was the lowest moment in my career. Well… one of them anyway. I was getting ready to trim my beard when it struck me. _Walt was poisoning me._


	8. Resident Evil

Saul, Wednesday Morning, Day 22  
My chest tightened around the thought: _Walt is poisoning me._ It was a conclusion that fit the evidence perfectly. The _only_ conclusion that did. And yet I shrank back from this declaration of his evil. But why would I afford him that courtesy? He had poisoned before. Hell, he had _killed_ before.

I walked down the stairs in a stunned trance. He spoke and I ignored him. Maybe, hopefully, I politely turned down his offer of breakfast. I don’t remember. At work, I threaded absently, a flooding distaste growing low down in my throat. I vomited it out and then sat down to do some research. 

First on my list of possible culprits was the obvious choice: ricin. Its symptoms are similar to food-poisoning. A growing panic threatened to consume me. The Cantillo boy had nearly died, and he was in the hospital. Then I noticed a hopeful search result: “Self-Treatment at Home.” I clicked on it and got: “None! If exposure to ricin is a possibility, the people exposed must seek medical attention immediately.” That’s what it said, word for word, exclamation mark included. 

That rat bastard! Was he trying to kill me? Why?

I read on. I read about stomach pumping, soaking up the poison with super-activated charcoals and I read about castor beans being the source of this nasty substance.  
Ricin was the obvious choice for Walt, but how likely was it that he’d be carrying castor beans around with him? He had to get his shit together quickly when he blew out of town. When you just killed a DEA agent do you say to yourself, “oh, let me grab my ricin in case I want to slowly kill someone?” Maybe Walt does.

I tried a different approach, typing my symptoms into the search engine to see what causes would come back. The first hit seemed pretty benign: medication side-effect, sleep apnea, food poisoning.... But lower down a search result caught my eye: Arsenic.

Could Walt have passed up his favored poisoning method to use the most stereotypical method of all? Arsenic seemed too mundane for him.

But with a more comprehensive review of arsenic symptoms, I realized the poison was leaving its ominous fingerprint all over my life: metallic taste in mouth (check), blood in urine (check), loss of hair (oh, great), confusion, even delirium (maybe?), abdominal pain (check), convulsions (OMG), excessive sweating (check), hemolysis (who knows?), and shock (wonderful).

On cue, I noticed that my shirt had become cold and sticky against my skin. I became conscious of my breathing: it was too shallow and fast. I tried to breathe in slowly but instead found myself gulping air like a grounded fish. Just then I heard a straining noise on the projector, and then “snap.” The film broke. _12 Years a Slave_ had a brain wrap. The jolting flash of white jarred against the screen as the bulb shone on for an instance without the film. I looked at the mess and thought about just slinking out the emergency exit, leaving White Bear Lake and the evil monster who lived in my house... but Lacey appeared, breathless, next to the projector and I knew I couldn’t just walk out with a witness.  
So I set to work. I had to unwind the film which had wrapped itself tightly around the brain mechanism that feeds the film into the projector. I noticed the issue; the platter motor had been disengaged so that the platter didn’t move like it was supposed to. It took about ten minutes, but I got the film unwound. My hands, my whole body, trembled as I worked.

“Paul, are you okay?” Lacey asked. I wiped the sweat away from my face. 

“Sure, just a little under the weather still.” I said, but my voice didn’t feel like it belonged to me. Half of me was on the stairs of the emergency exit, in my truck, driving away to take revenge on Walt.

I pulled out some slack from the film, spliced it back together. Something about the feel of the film in my fingers brought me back together, body and mind. I looked up at her and attempted a reassuring smile. 

“I have to go downstairs in case anybody complains. We’ll talk about this later.” I tried to be solemn in response to the pending admonition, but I was already sinking under the weight of Walt’s terror.

With Lacey gone, I huddled in my coat and read on about arsenic. Walt could have gotten hold of it by burning wood. I remembered coming home one day to the smell of the fireplace. I recall thinking it was a little warm to be burning a fire. And then I told myself that maybe Walt was cold due to the chemo. I felt a little sorry for him at the time. What an asshole.

I checked out a few other poisons that I could think of: cyanide, strychnine, anti-freeze; I even checked out Xanax overdose. It seemed like ricin and arsenic were the most likely culprits.

What to do next? I wanted desperately to go to the hospital. I was trying to think through the implications of that. My brain felt like someone had poured glue in it. 

If I went to the hospital the whole game would be over. They’d figure out I was being poisoned. They’d investigate the house. They’d find Walt and arrest him. He would tell them about me and we’d both end up in prison. Prison, I imagined, would be like living with a bunch of Walts, being guarded by a bunch of Walts, and being a sitting duck for a shanking like Dan Wachsberger. No. I wasn’t going out that way.

I looked up super-activated charcoal. It was available commercially. Probably not quite the same as you’d get in the hospital, but who knows? Maybe it’s like Tylenol ( _the pain reliever hospitals trust most_ …). 

I needed an exit strategy. That was clear. Meanwhile, I’d stop eating at the house, hydrate as much as possible, and take charcoal.

Walt, Wednesday Afternoon, Day 22  
I wondered at Saul’s refusal of breakfast. Surely it meant that he’d figured out he’s being poisoned. It wasn’t surprising given the contents of his delirious ravings. At some level, he clearly knew he was being poisoned. Now it was only a matter of time until he realized that it wasn’t the food that was poisoning him. He’d figure out about the Xanax. And then what would he do? He’d probably want to go to the hospital, but he’d probably see that as the surefire prison sentence that it was. Perhaps he would seek revenge. That’s what I would do. I had to be on the alert for Saul’s retaliation. 

Walt, Wednesday Night, Day 22  
Saul came home that night at around 12:30am. He looked terrible; his face was drawn and he seemed to be shaky. “I made a chicken casserole,” I told him.

“It smells good, but I ate at work. I think… I want to get my schedule back on track; I’m going to start eating at work at a decent hour.” His voice was strained.

“I hear the popcorn there is great,” I said with a calculated levity designed to betray no acknowledgement of the poisonous dance between us. “How did your first day back go?”

“I started feeling really crappy again at work today. It wasn’t a good day.”

“What movies are you getting tomorrow?”

He sighed and said, “Ironically it’s _All is Lost_ , _Counselor_.”

“Is _The Counselor_ a comedy? I could use some comedy.”

“No. Nothing funny about _The Counselor_. It’s a mob movie.”

“Mob movies can be funny. What about _Analyze This_?” I asked.

“ _The Counselor_ is not a comedy.”

“So what’s it about then?”

“A lawyer gets involved in some ill-advised drug deals,” he explained.

“That sounds kind of familiar.”

“Yeah, I’m hoping one of the kids will stay to watch it. Trouble is, it’s a weeknight and most of those kids are in high school.” 

“What’s _All is Lost_ about?”

“Robert Redford, lost at sea.”

“That sounds depressing, and too close to home. Why don’t you watch _The Counselor_ and tell me about it.” 

“All right,” he said. “I’m going to bed; I don’t feel good.” He turned away.

“Saul?” I called after him. “You’re being talked about on CNN now.” I saw him reaching for his pocket.

Saul, Wednesday Night, Day 22  
I was glad to finally be in the refuge of my room, even if Walt was just on the other side of the door. I had brought a bottle of whiskey to the room the other day and I slammed some down now, even though it didn’t seem like a good idea. I needed to bolster myself before checking the news. I still felt ragged and disembodied from the horrific day. I wasn’t sure I could take anymore. I sucked in a deep gasp of air and picked up my phone. I hadn’t bothered to light the candle, so I worked by streetlight. The light of the phone lit up the room, so I closed the blinds, twisting the rod tight.

I went to CNN and browsed. It took awhile, but I finally found it. Saul Goodman, wanted for questioning. Saul Goodman missing, but presumed dead. Presumed dead. I turned it over in my mind. Yes, that is how I felt. Presumed dead.

I stared at the article. The date caught my eye: _Sunday_ , October 24th. Three days ago. On top of everything, he was withholding information from me.

I didn’t fall asleep for a very long time and when I did, the snails came back.

Saul, Thursday Afternoon, Day 23  
With two movies leaving and two movies incoming, the Thursday night changeover was to be a bit simpler this week. After the previous day’s trauma, I could use simpler. I tried to be mindful as I threaded each projector for the noon shows: _let the threading distract you_ , I told myself. Lacey had lectured me about the brain wrap; it wasn’t fun to be reprimanded by a 12 year old, but she was right. I needed to be more careful. It didn’t matter how that motor got disengaged; I should have caught it.

Much as I tried to get lost in the threading, thoughts of Walt insinuated their way in. What did I ever do to him? Sometimes I could have been a more effective ‘criminal’ lawyer, but the complexities of representing Walter White exceeded my pay grade. He’s going to push me to the edge of death for that?

Maybe he was trying to weaken me so he could finish me off. Sneak into my room at night and stab me, or something. But if he wanted to kill me, he could just shoot me. Maybe he wanted to use me as collateral in negotiating with the feds. I don’t know, I couldn’t figure it out, and thinking about it just made me feel more ill.

I tried to shift to a more constructive train of thought: how could I get back at Walt? I could give him some of his own medicine, so to speak. That would involve acquiring ricin or arsenic and administering it to him somehow, but how? I could slip it into his food or drink. But that would be hard given he does all the cooking and I wasn’t about to eat at the house again.

I did some more research on ricin. If they found this phone, I would be fucked. But with Walter White as my roommate, I was fucked anyway, so what did it matter?

The website said that the process of extracting the ricin from castor beans was ‘complicated,’ similar to the extraction process of cyanide from almond (thanks for the helpful comparison). Of course they didn’t outline how that was done. I didn’t suppose “Poisoning Your Local Lunatic for Dummies” was available at the White Bear Lake public library. 

The more I read about ricin, the less it seemed like that was what Walt was using to poison me. If he was, then I was supposed to die today. I felt pretty terrible, but not like I was going to die, whatever that feels like. Plus, I didn’t have the tell-tale burning sensation in my mouth.

So he was probably giving me arsenic. To return the favor I’d need to procure the ash of treated wood. Two big challenges loomed large. First I’d have to get my hands on the right wood. In 2002 they wised up and stopped putting arsenic in treated wood. So I’d have to find old wood. A simple trip to Home Depot wouldn’t do. And then somehow I’d have to burn it. 

But where did Walt get the old wood? Probably the basement. I’m sure he hadn’t left it lying around for me to follow his gruesome path.

I fantasized about more violent options. I could attack him somehow. It was sort of fun to consider, but I sighed, realizing the folly of it. If we were both healthy, he would kick my ass nine times out of ten. In my current state, an attack would be suicidal. The only way it could work would be right after his chemo. But even then, I’d need to increase my chances with some kind of sedative. Maybe I could spike his chemo drip bag with a sedative, or for that matter, with the arsenic itself.

Walt, Thursday Afternoon, Day 23  
So, Saul was on to me. It was inevitable. He wasn’t as much an idiot as he seemed. God knows why he puts on that act, though he has toned it down since he left Albuquerque.  
How will Saul retaliate? The obvious choice was arsenic, and he could get it the same way I did. The burned wood was safely stowed in my cabinet, but the fresh wood was out in the open. I went down to the basement. The cool humidity forced a shiver. I gathered up the wood and locked it away and then scoured the dank cellar to be sure there was no more wood. I peered up at the rafters of the unfinished ceiling. If Saul were truly enterprising, he could pilfer a cross-section of wood from the rafters. But so what if he did? He’d still have the challenge of burning the wood and administering the poison. 

Anticipating Saul’s revenge brought to mind another project: Jack Welker. How was I going to my money back and take out him and his crew? The hit man idea had been a disaster. Was there still a way to pursue that angle? The original middle man, Simon, was obviously not a viable option. Even if I could shake him down to get my money back, he couldn’t be trusted. Did Saul have other contacts that could help to arrange a hit? And how could I get access to the contact list that resided only in his head?

I could just execute the killing myself. Or I could make Saul do it. I could send him in to their camp strapped with explosives, demanding the return of my money. But I would need to be there to make him do that. And how would I get him into the camp… It was enticing to think about, but it fell short on the realism scale. No, I would have to go myself. Returning to Albuquerque was likely a guaranteed death sentence, but what, in this fugitive life, wasn’t?

Saul, Thursday Night, Day 23  
I left the theatre at 2:45am. Big fat rain drops started falling just as I reached my truck. I cranked the ignition once, twice. The engine sputtered to life. I groaned, hoping that wasn’t a sign of impending car trouble. When I pulled into the driveway I saw the flickering of candles in the windows. It reminded me of going to Chuck’s, always an embarassing experience--the markers of his disability painting a veneer over my brother’s heady achievements.

Inside, Walt was sleeping in the blue velvet chair. He didn’t stir when I came in and I wondered if this was my opportunity. Could I plunge a knife through his evil heart before he roused? Did I even have it in me? Before I could allow myself to linger in the fantasy or, God forbid, act on it, I heard some less courageous part of myself call his name, breaking the spell. 

Walt still did not wake, but now his consciousness had been called one more level forward. I wasn’t going to shake him: that would probably get me shot or at least slapped. I dropped my keys on the coffee table and he came to.

“Hey, buddy,” he squinted at me, “how was your day?” I was so weary of this verbal tennis that we played, going through the polite routines of everyday language while privately sizing each other up.

“Lousy, this flu doesn’t seem to be going away. I felt… I feel horrible,” I said, playing along. _Yes, Walt, you are still winning. I know about the poison, but I’m still ingesting it, unwittingly._

“I’m sorry to hear that. Were you able to watch _The Counselor_?” 

“Yeah, I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. How was your day?” _You miserable fuck. Boring as hell I hope. And fueled by fears of your inevitable capture._

“Oh, you know, same routine. Some news, some chess. I downloaded a chess app. You know, those smart phones are phenomenal, I should have switched to one long ago.”

“Frank, I have to ask you something…” I took a shot at piercing the veil. “Yesterday you told me about me being mentioned on CNN.” He nodded slowly. “Well, I looked it up myself—you know, my big moment on CNN, had to see it for myself—and I saw that the article was published on Sunday.” I just wanted to see how he would react and I wanted him to know I noticed.

He took a beat—composing a lie, I supposed—and then he said, “You’ve been so sick, I didn’t think you could handle it. Besides, you weren’t going out.”

It was the obvious excuse, but unfortunately it also made sense.

“Can you do me a favor and not try to protect me from the truth,” I said, again testing boundaries.

“Sure, buddy, that’s a reasonable request.”

“I’m gonna make some soup,” I said. “Do you want any?” _Poison perhaps?_

“No, thanks.”

I went into the kitchen and washed a clean pot. Then I retrieved a can of soup from the cupboard. That’s when I saw it: a box of rat poison. I inspected its contents: bright blue rice-like grains. Here was a new possibility. I replaced the box on the shelf and prepared my soup. It needed some salt, but no way I was going to use anything that was already opened. Walt headed off to bed.

I waited a half-hour and then grabbed the gas-fueled camp lantern that illuminated the dining room and headed down into the basement. It was crowded with over-flowing piles of college student crap. Books, clothes, soccer balls, basketballs, frisbees. But no baseball bats or tennis rackets.

The windows had all been blocked out using pieces of cardboard. It made me wonder why Walt wanted to be so meticulous about his goings-on down here. Then I saw a television and thought, of course, he had to block out the flickering blue light of the TV. But what would he watch? I doubted there would be reception. I noticed that the TV was hooked up to a VCR.

This hit a nerve. Had Walt watched my “Better Call Saul” ad reel? Of course he had… I was trying to clutch at a vague memory of our discussing it. When did we talk about it? I know we did, but I couldn’t remember it clearly. Trying to resurrect the memory only served to tax my pain riddled head which was already shot through with a pounding ache. I let the rembrance slide away.

Nearby a workbench stood in cold relief: no tools, not a speck of dust, not even sawdust on the old wood surface. Just a conspicuous absence which marked the space as the lab of the great chemist. The discovery of this wretched place made my bones ache and deep inside it stoked a dull flame which lusted for revenge. But thinking back to my missed opportunity in the living room, just an hour before, I longed for the strength to see it through.

Continuing my exploration I came across a cabinet secured by a padlock, the shininess of which screamed of its recent acquisition. Walt must be using his beloved smart phone to buy the tools of his dark arts off the internet. And he was sequestering those tools here. I knew without looking that I would not find a bolt-cutter, or any other implement that could smash a padlock, or a skull. I noticed with disappointment that it was a combination lock. A keyed lock I might have been able to pick; I’d done it before. Nor was it the kind of combination lock that had a keyed access on the back in case the owner forgot the combination. It was a piece of shit lock, really, just strong enough to defeat me.


	9. Duel

Saul, Friday Afternoon, Day 24  
At 10:00 am I was awakened by the blare of my alarm. It seemed unfair somehow, its rousing me from my sleep only five or so hours after I had gotten there. But sleep was just a riddled anxiety trip. The snails had become the nightly creature feature. They were nastier now. They bit and mocked me. No, I didn’t want anymore sleep.

But getting out of bed was no escape. As I sat up I became aware of an insistent pounding in my head. It was like there was someone deep inside of me banging to get out. My true self, the self I would be if I didn’t feel like shit all the time, if I didn’t have to constantly check over my shoulder to see who was trying to undo me.

My stomach felt locked in a seizure of cramps. I wasn’t getting any better and figured that meant that I was still ingesting the poison. But how?

I thought about calling in but Lacey wouldn’t take it well. The fact that she hadn’t let me go already was probably only indicative of how rare projectionists had become in the Twin Cities. Technology was killing the projectionist. They must have all fled to other occupations or they were as old as the wind.

Before work, I needed to get to Whole Foods. There I picked up some charcoal pills and alkaline water with electrolytes. I had been guzzling the pop from the Coke machine at the theatre but now I would switch to water and Gatorade.

Once at work, I finished dropping new trailer reels into the existing films, gave the once over to the new films, and got everything threaded up. The afternoon was uneventful, which is just how you want it in a movie theatre. 

I was looking forward to Taryn’s arrival in the evening. She came in about a half hour early and came right up to see me in the booth.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said. At first, I thought those affectations of hers were forward, but then I realized she spoke to just about everyone that way. I found it special anyway. No one had called me sweetie in years.

“Hi, Taryn,” I replied. She approached me like she was going to peck my check. God, I wanted her to. But instead I said, “You should keep your distance, I still have a bug.”

“Oh, baby, yeah, you still don’t look good. Have you been to the doctor?”

I started to tell her that I had, but I couldn’t bear lying to her. “No. I’ll go Monday if I’m still feeling bad.” She gave me a look of disapproval, her brows furrowed.

“You need to get better. You promised to take me out, remember?”

“Yes. Why don’t we plan on it for Monday or Tuesday? I’m sure I’ll be better by then.”

“That sounds lovely, Paul. But let’s shoot for Tuesday. Monday is Halloween. We don’t need to be running into any crazies out there…. I’ll let you get back to threading. Are you going to come downstairs later or keep hibernating up here like a recluse?”

“I’m feeling like a recluse. Will you come up and see me on break?”

“Sure, sweetie. I can bring you some soup?”

“That would be great.” She knew my favorite was the chicken rice soup at the diner next door.

Walt, Friday Afternoon, Day 24  
After Saul left I inspected the basement door. I had placed a slip of paper in the door jamb, and it had fallen out. A chill crept up my spine but then I reminded myself who I was dealing with… what could Saul really do to me? Nonetheless, I went downstairs to see what he had been up to. I went straight to my cabinet and found it unmolested. I unlocked the cabinet anyway and took a quick inventory. Everything seemed to be in place.

I noticed the TV and VCR. I hadn’t meant to leave them out in the open like that. It wasn’t a big deal, because I wanted him to know about the tape. And in his delirium he had revealed that he did. Still, mistakes could be costly in this little game we were playing. Every move had to be one of intention.

My next stop was the kitchen. Saul hadn’t been in there much. He had been content to let me do the cooking until he realized I was poisoning him. I went straight for the cupboard and checked the rat poison. Sure enough it had been moved. I opened up the box; it seemed to be at the same level as where I’d left it. But it was hard to say. He could have taken out a tablespoon. I now had to assume that he had ‘poison’ in his possession. But what would he do with it? Would he be content just to poison me? Or would the poisoning only be a means to a further end?

In any event, I needed severe consequences. First of all, I’d need something to punish Saul for poisoning me. Secondly, once he discovered that it was the Xanax that was poisoning him, I’d need something to serve as a new control mechanism. I gave Patrick Kuby a call.

“It’s me,” I said to him but he didn’t recognize my voice. “Chuck McGill’s friend,” I clarified.

It took a moment for him to connect the dots. “Oh, hey,” he finally said.

“I have a new job for you.”

“Let’s not talk about it over the phone.”

“Look, I don’t have many communication options. Do you want to make $25,000?”

“What do I have to do?”

“Start a fire.”

“I told you, I’m not a hit man!”

“Just a fire… no one gets hurt.”

Kuby listened as I fleshed out the details.

“You in?” I asked.

“$35,000,” he replied.

“I’ll send you a package.” 

I headed upstairs and located Saul’s tote bag. It was like a bank open for business. There was probably a million dollars left after my withdrawal to cover Ed’s bribe and the Dobbs’ IDs. I loved using Saul’s money against him; it wasn’t really _Saul’s_ money anyway. It was all earned off of _my_ ingenuity, _my_ high quality product. And what was Saul going to do about it? Lecture me?

Next I scoured the basement to find a box the right size for the money. The next day I would need to flag down the mail carrier. That would involve going outside which would compromise my cover. For the benefit of nosy neighbors, I would have to drape a large piece of foil over my shoulders. 

Saul, Friday Night, Day 24  
As the seven o’clock shows started to play, I stood by one of the projectors watching the trailers. I had just dropped in _Dallas Buyers Club_ and I wanted to see what it was about. I watched the film with no sound, so it was a little hard to tell what was going on. Something about emaciated people and drugs…

And it clicked. Walt was poisoning me with drugs! How obvious! And metaphorical, I had to give Walt credit. Metaphorical, in a sickening way. 

My hand was jittery like an addict. Clumsily I popped the lid off the Xanax bottle. Some spilled to the floor. The remainder I dumped out on the work table. I studied the pills. They all had the score on one side but some of them were lacking the Xanax imprint! 

I felt dizzy. Until this moment, for some crazy reason, I did not one hundred percent believe that Walt was poisoning me. I couldn’t believe; it was too painful to think that someone would do that to me. But now I knew how he was doing it for sure. I felt like I could hear the _Psycho_ violins playing their sinister song. How could he be so vicious? Every time I sought the safety of my Xanax, Walt was thrusting me deeper into the abyss. It was like being buried alive.

My heart was pounding hard. I felt panicky. I wanted a Xanax. I gave a pathetic laugh, realizing I couldn’t trust any of the pills in my possession. I brought two of the pills into the bathroom where I could turn the light on full bore. One had the imprint, the other didn’t. I saw that they weren’t exactly the same color nor were they precisely the same size. So somehow Walt had manufactured his own evil little impostor pills, his laced with arsenic.

I threw the two pills into the toilet, then I wished I hadn’t. After all, now I had in my hand the means to return the favor to Walt. I had the arsenic, now all I needed was a way to administer it. But what would be the point of poisoning Walt? Sweet revenge, surely. But, I’m not that guy… I don’t use violence and horror to accomplish _my_ ends. 

In any event, the game was over. I couldn’t continue to live with a man who was poisoning me. But I couldn’t just walk away either. If I did, Walt couldn’t call the police—the police presented a bigger risk for him than for me. But he _could_ make good on his threats to Kim and Chuck. Any exit plan on my part would have to neutralize that possibility. 

And what about Taryn? Was my involvement with her putting Taryn and Daunte at risk? If I cared about her, then I should end this mutual infatuation or friendship, or whatever it was we had. But besides Chuck and Kim, Taryn was all I had—the idea of her anyway. I didn’t know if she felt the same way about me. I had fallen her ridiculously hard and fast. I didn’t really know her; it was a stupid schoolboy crush. Still, while Chuck and Kim represented chapters that were likely closed, Taryn was the future, all cheery and innocent. 

I was still obsessing about her when she came up for break. Furthering the relationship would only heighten the cruelty… but I couldn’t bring myself to be a gentleman. A dreamy optimism led me to ignore the warning sirens blaring in my already aching head. 

She brought me a soup and a salad and had the same for herself. 

“Let me pay you for that. And the groceries,” I said, reaching for my billfold. 

“Oh, no, Paul, it’s my treat.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous. I see you working two jobs. I doubt that you’re here at the theatre for the fun of it. Besides, trust me. I can afford it." 

I thumbed through the fat stack of bills in my wallet and I handed her one of my $50s. “Ooh…” she replied. 

That was a stupid thing to do, I realized. Showing off with my money. I know it was rooted in trying to impress Taryn. And more so, in some weird way, trying to be authentic with her, hinting at who I really was. And who was that? A criminal on the lam looking for acceptance? A coward who’s too nice to do the difficult thing? That’s attractive. 

Trying to change the subject I asked, “How’s Daunte doing?” 

“He can’t stop talking about threading.” 

“I shouldn’t have shown him that. It’s a dying art.” 

“No, Paul, it’s the fact that you showed an interest _in him_. You’re the first adult male since his father to do that.” 

“He’s a good kid. Smart.” 

“He’s on his best behavior here. I put the fear of God in him over keeping this job.” 

After break, I stood watching the images of Robert Redford trying to chase down his own demons while fighting the waves that would consume him. I didn’t know how I would administer the poison, but I did know that it would involve crushing the pills into powder. For this I needed to get one of those pharmacy things: a cup and a masher. What were they called? I looked it up: mortar and pestle. They had it at Bed, Bath and Beyond. I guess this was part of their ‘beyond’ inventory. 

I wasn’t clear how I was going to poison Walt, or even _if_ I was going to do it. Though, fantasizing about it gave me a bit of a charge and, at the same time, a measure of solace. I would target Tuesday as the big day. It was perfect and it was risky because it was obvious: it was chemo day. Walt would be on his guard. Maybe the best solution was to surprise Walt by doing nothing on that day. 

I had another problem. I couldn’t just stop taking Xanax under Walt’s scrutinizing eye. Each moment that the fluttering sensation of panic had sent me reaching for my pocket, he had probably notched a little victory. I couldn’t deprive him of those small wins. A sudden cessation would be a sure give away that I not only knew that he was poisoning me but that I knew how as well. 

Somehow he was fucking with the pills in my pocket. He must be slipping into my bedroom at night. That would have been easy enough once I got sick. But how did he get in there in the first place? On a Thursday… he could have slipped me a mickey. Yes, that’s right; I first got sick on a Friday. 

So, I would have to offer up the appearance of continuing to take the Xanax while somehow protecting myself from the tainted pills. 

I could think of two options: cut up some purple candy, Sweet Tarts maybe, and take those instead, or carefully take only the imprinted Xanax. Option A sounded safer. Before I went to bed I’d have to hide my Sweet Tarts and fill the bottle back up with the tainted Xanax. It would be a pain in the ass, but it seemed the best plan. 

There was yet one more problem. If I cut off my supply of Xanax entirely, I would withdraw. I couldn’t imagine anxiety gripping me even more tightly than it had over the last couple of weeks. I could take the risk and continue to consume the imprinted pills. It was a lesser of the two evils proposition: face my anxiety alone or chance the continued poisoning. Anxiety seemed the better option. After all, it only _felt_ like dying. I went downstairs to buy some Sweet Tarts. 

Saul, Saturday Morning, Day 25  
By Saturday, I was feeling a little bit better physically. It had only been about twelve hours since I’d made the discovery about the Xanax, so maybe it was just the knowledge that I was no longer consuming the poison that buoyed me. 

I left the house early so that I could go purchase a mortar and pestle. I was going to prepare to poison Walt. Whether I would defy my own nature and follow through on it, I didn’t know…. 

I would need a hiding place for the mortar and pestle. The truck seemed like the safest place. I removed the contents from the glove box and put them under the passenger’s seat. Then I locked the mortar and pestle into the glove box. The lock used the same key as the ignition, so it wasn’t high security. More out of sight than safe and sound. I wondered, if I decided to go the poisoning route, where would I grind up the pills? The projection booth, the truck, my bedroom, in the woods… all of these locales presented their own set of problems. 

When I arrived at the theatre, Daunte came up to the booth to see me. 

“What it is?” he said. 

“Not much going on here. What’s up with you?” 

“I’ve got the SAT coming up,” he was hanging his head. “Did you have ta go to college? A projectionist don’t need no college, right?” 

“College…” I sighed and thought of my own college experiences: Roosevelt University in Chicago, followed by American Samoa online. Then I thought about Paul Dobbs’ background: a couple of years at DeVry, no degree. “I went to college because _I wanted to_. But I ran out of money, didn’t graduate,” I told him. 

“See, and you’re doing all right.” 

“No. A projectionist is a crap job. I only make a few dollars more an hour than you do and the hours are crap; I work about sixty hours a week, all weekend.” 

“But then you get overtime.” 

“You get overtime, but what’s the trade off? You’re missing life. No, better to find something that pays a higher wage, or better yet, be salaried." 

“Can I thread?” he asked. 

“Sure.” 

He rolled the film slack up on to the platter and put down suction cups to keep the film in place. Then, tentatively he took the film leader and passed it through the brain mechanism and began to thread the projector. 

“Daunte, the more education you have, the more control you have over your work destiny. I had a friend who became a lawyer. He was charging people over $4,000 to defend them. Each.” 

“Do you mean like Brett Magnuson?” 

“Who’s that?” 

“He got some dumb ass ads about getting your ‘ho out of jail and shit.” 

“It’s whatever you want it to be. If you want to work with ’hos and shit, you can. If you want to defend corporations, you can.” 

“Oh, I’d rather defend a ‘ho.” 

“Me too,” I smiled and we laughed. 

The films started firing up for the 12 o’clock shows. Every fifteen minutes another movie would begin. As they did, I stood by watching the trailers, making sure everything was playing straight. Daunte had done a nice job with the threading. No wobble in the slack, everything in frame. 

As the last film started, I stared transfixed by the colored lights flickering on the booth window. I was thinking about Walt. The worst possible outcome from his perspective would be to end up in prison, his money seized. Walt would rather die than end up behind bars. Poisoning Walt wouldn’t get him any closer to prison. It would just keep him homebound—which he already was. Poisoning also presented the possibility of accidentally killing him. That would be bad for me. I mean, a) I’m not a murderer, and b) I’d have to flee. Eventually the police would discover the body and there would be an intensive search for Paul Dobbs. 

Poisoning Walt, as tempting as it was, was out. And Walt going to prison, that would be bad for me too. In almost every prison scenario, Walt gives me up. Would I rather die than go to prison? It was sort of a toss-up as I figured prison for a death sentence anyway. 

The best option for me was to just walk away, but I couldn’t do that until Kim and Chuck were safe. How was I going to make that happen? The beauty of fleeing would be that Walt couldn’t rat me out without revealing himself. Even if he made an anonymous call, they’d track him down. I’d make sure. No wonder Walt has been so focused on keeping me too sick to flee. 

So, how to keep Kim and Chuck safe? 


	10. As Good As It Gets

Walt, Saturday Morning, Day 25  
If Saul was going to retaliate he’d need every conceivable advantage to do it. I would be at my most vulnerable on Tuesday, chemo day. And my weakest link would be my IV drip bags. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I could see: there was no way Saul would pass up tainting my chemotherapy. After all, it would be poetic justice to poison my medicine just like I had poisoned his drugs. Saul was into metaphor.

Spiking the bags would have been easy for him to do. There was a port on each bag for the purpose of adding medication. But it would also be pretty easy for me to detect. If Saul was using rat poison, or arsenic, the most he could do would be to pulverize the poison into a fine dust. That would be visible in the bag. And anyway, I wasn’t going to give him a chance to do that.

As part of our electromagnetic hypersensitivity cover, Saul purchased bags of ice every day. Usually, we just dumped those bags out in the sink. But for a couple of days now, I had been saving them up. Now I placed them in a portable cooler along with my IV drip bags. I took the cooler downstairs to my cabinet, tucking them safely away.

I turned to the news and ‘bingo:’ today was the day my story became prominent on CNN. I was being described as the drug kingpin Heisenberg. There was a brief description of my drug empire and Blue Sky. I felt a nostalgia for the whole enterprise. I also felt an anger toward those who tore it down: Jesse, Jack Welker, and Hank.

The newscast said, “White is wanted for questioning in the disappearance of four men who are presumed dead: DEA Agents Henry “Hank” Schrader and Steven Gomez; White’s former partner, Jesse Pinkman; and Attorney Saul Goodman.” How could I convince them that I didn’t kill Hank? I couldn’t do that to my sister-in-law, and, by extension, to my wife! What kind of heartless maniac did they think I was? I could handle it when they accused me of things I’d actually done, but this business about Hank… it was driving an untenable rift in my relationship with Skyler.

The story had an image that showed head shots of all four of my alleged victims which meant that each individual picture was small. So, the authorities really did think that Hank et al. were dead. If they believed the men were missing they’d want to give you a good look at those photos in case you’d seen someone. No, they were only looking for graves now.  
I couldn’t wait to tell Saul the news that night. Nothing sent him scrambling for his Xanax like news coverage.

Next I turned to my chess game. I went deep into the book to the later chapters. I wanted to find a challenging problem. I set the chess board up to mimic the problem and got to work.

Saul, Saturday Evening, Day 25  
By Saturday evening I was feeling markedly better. I ventured downstairs at the 5:30 break. The kids were playful about seeing me out of the booth. “Oh, no. Here comes a _walker_ ,” Oliver jested, holding up his broom to fend me off.

At the ticket booth, Craig, the Security guy, was talking to Taryn. I didn’t think he came in until 6pm. “Oh look, it’s the _Dawn of the Living Dead_ ,” he said when he saw me.

“You’re here early,” I greeted Craig.

“We’re expecting _All is Lost_ to bring out the knuckleheads,” he said sarcastically. “I thought I’d set up shop early.”

“Are you going on break?” I asked Taryn. She nodded.

I joined her for a quick meal at the diner next door. It was one of those Greek joints and it hadn’t been remodeled in a long time. Cigarette and gum ball machines sat by the front door making me feel like I’d just time traveled. There were lots of mirrors and worn vinyl seats that looked like they could have come from a Studebaker. We were handed menus with numbered food offerings. Over a hundred entrees swelled the menu. We needed something fast, so without delving into the outer reaches of Macedonia, I just settled on the chili.

Taryn said, “Somebody must be feeling better!”

“Yeah, thank God, I am.”

“You’re looking better too.”

“Thanks. To listen to the kids you’d think I was something out of _The Walking Dead_.”

“They haven’t seen you in awhile. You’ve lost some weight, you know.”

She was right. I was using a different hole on my belt and belts were now a requirement or my pants would hang down low like Jesse Pinkman’s.

“Daunte tells me that he has the SAT coming up,” I said, wishing to talk about something that involved Taryn and not Walt.

“He did? I didn’t know it was on his mind.” She smiled, showing her perfect white teeth. “What do you know about the SAT? Cause I barely passed it. My high school education was suspect.”

“Well, it’s what? Math and English? I don’t know what else. I’m pretty good at vocabulary…. Do you want me to help him study?”

“That would be fantastic! Are you sure?”

“Sure! Send him by the booth after school. Or we could do Mondays or Tuesdays.”

“Would this Monday work? You don’t have Halloween plans?”

“Well, I thought I’d go as a zombie since I have my look together already,” we laughed. “Your house?”

“Yes, say 4pm?”

We both reached for some saltines and our hands brushed. She took ahold of mine.

“Paul, you have no idea how much this means. You know my husband died young; Daunte was seven years old.”

“That’s an impressionable time,” I said.

“Douglas wasn’t the ideal husband and father, but he loved that boy.”

“How did he pass away?” I asked her, aware of the warmth from her hand.

“Heart attack, a congenital defect. At 39.” She could probably see me doing the math in my head because she added, “he was a bit older than me. I’m 45.”

“Oh, I’m 52,” I told her. She slowly took her hand back so that she could open her package of saltines. As she crumbled the crackers into her soup, I realized I had just given her my real age, not Paul Dobbs’—49. 

“I’m so sorry, Taryn. That must have been very hard for you and Daunte.”

“He my little trooper.” She said, smiling while her eyes welled with tears. I took her hand back and held it gently. I noticed an old man giving us the evil eye.

“They’re staring at us,” I whispered. “Guess they haven’t seen a _walker_ dating a normal person before.” 

She laughed.

I’d said ‘dating.’ And she hadn’t blinked.

Walt, Saturday Night, Day 25  
Saul came home around 12:30am. He was looking more energetic than I’d seen in a long time, the color returning to his face.

“Looks like you’re feeling better,” I said.

“But I’m not,” he claimed. “I’ve got one of those splitting headaches… and other… stuff.”

“Your system is trying to purge something nasty. I assume you don’t want any clam chowder.” It was a chilly day. I had picked the soup for its wintery qualities.

“No, thanks, I ate at work.” He sat down on the couch and I joined him in the living room, choosing the blue velvet chair. It was the most disgusting piece of furniture in the living room, but also the most comfortable.

“There were some developments on CNN,” I told him. Instinctively, he reached for his pill bottle. “Your photo was posted. It was together with Hank, Jesse, and Gomez, so it was kind of small.” Saul swallowed a pill and chased it with a beer. “Let me show you,” I said navigating through my phone’s history.

I found the image and passed him the phone. “You see… I think this is a good thing. If they thought you were missing they’d blow up your photo and give you lots of screen time. This is the opposite. They think you’re dead. They think you’re all dead. And when they find Hank and Gomez’s bodies then they’ll be even more likely to think you’re dead too.”

“Hank and Gomez’s bodies? You killed them?” 

This guy knew how to irritate me. “I didn’t _kill Hank_ , Saul. That’s my own _brother-in-law_. Try to follow the storyline here. _Jack Welker killed Hank_. Which is one of the main reasons that I want to smash his head with an ATM machine. Capiche?”

“And when they do find Hank, which way is the evidence going to point?” Now here was Saul at his legalistic best, thinking about evidence and such. As soon as he said this I knew his moaning about not feeling good was a put on. He was feeling much better; his thinking faculties were coming back on line.

“Well, I can’t see how the evidence will point _toward_ me. I didn’t do it. But I don’t know that it will implicate Jack. As far as I know, the DEA doesn’t know anything about him. But that shot-up SUV will be a clue.”

“Maybe it would help if you told me what went down with Jack.”

I didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t one of my finer moments. I told Saul anyway, because if there was any chance he could spin this for me, or even help me to see it in a new light, I needed that help.

Once I gave him the details, Saul concluded, “So the only evidence that you were there is your shot-up car which was found a couple of miles a way. And then there’s the witnesses, Jack and his people and Jesse.”

“Jesse’s dead.” 

“Jesse’s supposed to be dead. If he’s not, he’s the most formidable witness against you… you signed his death warrant, he’s gonna be pissed.” Saul got up to get a second beer. 

“You want something?” he asked, I shook my head no. “Listen, let me take some time to noodle this one. I’m beat… gonna hit the sack.”

Saul headed upstairs. I went and sat at the dining room table where I had my chessboard setup. I continued to work on a difficult problem from earlier in the day. I had a couple of hours to kill.

At 3:45am I grabbed a lantern. If Saul wanted to hide something, the house wasn’t a good option. First he would have to walk it past me. Then he’d have the question of where to store it. There were abundant places, but none of them were secure, not even his room. If I were Saul, I’d hide things in that little truck of his. I retrieved Saul’s car keys from the hall piece, put on his jacket and ventured outside. It was a cold October evening. All the leaves had come down in a recent rainstorm. Dark naked branches reached up toward a ominous sky. The night was cloudy and a swift wind was causing the clouds to race. I opened the driver’s side door of the Ranger and climbed inside. 

I reached under the driver’s side seat. Nothing. Under the passenger’s side seat, however, I found the owner’s manual, a tire gauge, even the vehicle registration card… items that should be in the glove box. The glove box was locked, but the ignition key opened it. And voila, of all things to have in your glove box, Saul had a mortar and pestle. 

Saul, Monday Afternoon, Day 27  
I’d been waiting for Monday all weekend. Never in my life had I been so excited to tutor someone. Well, truth be told, never in my life had I tutored anyone. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to screw this up. I went to Barnes and Noble and got some general books on tutoring and some specific SAT study guides for math and English. Then I sat at the Starbucks inside the bookstore and read one of the tutoring books, cover to cover, paying rent for my table in unwanted coffees. I had a wicked caffeine buzz going by the time I needed to leave. 

I arrived on Taryn’s block at 3:55, but had to hunt for a parking space which made me a few minutes late. I walked up to a tidy, but sad, little house. Inviting lights glowed in several windows, but the gutters sagged, overflowing with wet leaves. The front steps were raggedy, the wood worn so smooth in the middle it looked like the beginnings of a canoe.

Daunte answered the door. He wore an expression that I couldn’t quite make out. So I said, “Today at 4pm. Tutoring session, yeah?”

His face lit up. “Yeah! I didn’t think you’d show.”

“Why wouldn’t I show?” He didn’t answer but led me inside the foyer of the old home. Unusual and exotic artwork populated the walls, but peaking out from behind the exquisite artwork were foundation fault lines and chipping paint. I saw the coppery red of water stains up near the ceiling. 

“Um, do you mind taking your shoes off?” Daunte asked, embarrassed at having to enforce some house rule, I presumed.

“Sure,” I complied, hoping he wouldn’t notice my socks. They had a bold zigzagging Saul Goodman pattern. Paul Dobbs didn’t own any socks. If Daunte noticed, he didn’t let on. He took me to a formal dining room where an angry radiator hissed and clanged. 

“Is your mom here?” I asked, peeking around the corners. 

“No. She not home from school yet.”

“She’s a teacher?”

“Yeah, she teach art…”

“Daunte?”

“Hmm?”

“We have to get one thing straight. If I’m gonna help you, you need to clean up your language.” He looked at me a little puzzled, as if I was accusing him of swearing. “I don’t care how you wanna talk to your friends, but to get you ready for the SATs you need to be well-versed in the King’s English. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I hear you. You doesn’t want me talking all street up in here,” he said and laughed. “I can do that.”

“OK. That’s my man.”

Daunte had a much greater vocabulary than he let on and he demonstrated a capacity to learn more. He quickly picked up new word roots making it easy for him to navigate many unfamiliar words. While we worked on vocabulary, Taryn came home. She pecked me on the cheek, eliciting an uncomfortable smile from Daunte. Taryn’s affection left me longing for more; it had been a long time since I’d been touched in that way, whether it was simply friendship or something more…

“Can you stay for dinner?” she asked, hovering over the table like a proud mama.

“Absolutely,” I said, cringing a bit inside as I thought about Walt wondering where I was. I had simply told him that I was going shopping. He probably figured that I was grabbing dinner since it was pretty clear that I wasn’t eating at the house anymore.

“We’re having macaroni and cheese—at the request of the scholar—with collard greens is that okay?

“You know, I’ve never had collard greens.”

“Well, don’t look so sour. You in for a treat.”

“'Are,'” Daunte said.

“Come again?” Taryn said.

“‘You _are_ in for a treat.’ We’re going to be speaking the King’s English,” Daunte explained. A big smile crept across Taryn’s face.

“Dinner will be ready in about half an hour.”

Daunte and I reviewed his next steps. Over the next couple of days he was to take both the math and English practice tests as a sort of diagnostic and we would use that to tweak his study plan. We then cleared away the study materials and Taryn set the table.

The mac and cheese was delicious; the collard greens, on the other hand, were bitter. “Eat up your greens, Paul, you need your strength.” I imagined myself as Popeye the Sailor Man and managed to clear my plate. Taryn tried to put more on it but I protested that I was just getting used to eating real food again. 

“What kind of music do you like to listen to?” I asked Daunte.

He looked at Taryn and then back at me. “Tupac, Kanye West, Dr. Dre… How about you?”

“Mostly classic rock. You know, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, but also some blues.”

“Blues, really? Who?” Taryn asked.

“Well, I used to live in Milwaukee,” I said, remembering to incorporate a detail from Paul Dobbs’ past. “We used to head down to Chicago to see Buddy Guy. And I like R.L. Burnside and John Lee Hooker.”

“Never heard of them,” Daunte declared as if this had some relationship to the quality of their music.

“Why do you like Tupac, etc?”

“The beats, mostly. And the lyrics. I like the protest stuff.”

“Well, if you like lyrics with a social conscience, you should check out Marvin Gaye and Bobby Womack.”

“Ooh, they old school,” Daunte replied.

“What?!?” Taryn and I said simultaneously.

“They _’re_ old school,” Daunte said quietly.

“That doesn’t make them bad. Where do you think all the riffs come from in the music you listen to?” I asked him.

It came time to go and I collected my coat and shoes. Daunte came running into the foyer carrying the SAT books. “No, Daunte, those are yours,” I said. Taryn reached for my hand. Daunte rolled his eyes but returned to the dining room to give us some privacy.

“Thank you so much for helping him. I haven’t seen my boy smile like that in months.” I kissed Taryn on the lips. She drew back a little at first and then leaned into the kiss, reciprocating. 

Walt, Monday Night, Day 27  
Saul returned home after eight o’clock, all smiley and dewy-eyed. He hadn’t specified a return time, so I couldn’t give him shit about it.

“You’re back late…” I said in a friendly tone. “You’ve been engaging in some extra-curricular activity?”

“Just shopping and dinner. I found a good Mexican place… reminds me of home.”

“Mexican?! You _must_ be feeling better.”

“A little bit.”

“Because you look _a lot_ better. I’d say you’ve kicked that bug.”

“Yeah, maybe. I think it was food poisoning,” he said, staring directly at me for an uncomfortable beat.

“No, food poisoning doesn’t go on that long unless you get re-infected.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking it was something I ate, or ingested, and that I did get re-infected….”

“So, if you’ve already eaten, then you probably don’t want any French stew.” Unless he was a pathological liar, Saul loved my stew.

“Oh, no. It smells delicious, but I’ll have to pass.” He truly looked disappointed as he headed toward the stairs.

“Saul,” I called after him. He turned, steeling himself like I was about to share some unsettling coverage from CNN. “Remember, it’s an early day tomorrow. We have chemo.”

“I remember,” he said, his blue eyes locking on mine.


	11. Blue Velvet

Walt, Tuesday Morning, Day 28  
When I woke up at eight o’clock, Saul had already been out. He’d picked up some breakfast at McDonald’s for both of us. He’d already eaten his McMuffin and was drinking orange juice.

“You know we have OJ,” I said. He just shrugged his shoulders like Junior might do. He was getting the IV pole set up next to the blue velvet chair.

“You’re setting things up early… thanks,” I told him. He reminded me about his date that evening, said he wouldn’t miss it for anything.

“Where’s the IV bag?” Saul asked. 

Saul, Tuesday Morning  
The chemo bag wasn’t in the refrigerator, which set off alarms. Walt must have sequestered it somewhere to keep me from spiking it. He brought the hidden bag up from the basement and attached it to the pole. He held a camp lantern up to the bag, inspecting the contents. It was a cloudy, slightly yellow liquid. I supposed Walt was looking for sediment. 

A bit of relief passed through me: had I spiked the bag, there was no way to have ground those pills finely enough. I was congratulating myself for dodging a bullet when wham! Walt pulled his gun on me. 

“Change of plans, counselor,” he sneered.

“What the fuck?! What’d I’d…” I tried to ask.

“Sit down!” he gestured to the blue velvet chair. The room slanted as I realized with horror what the sick bastard was planning to do.

Walt, Tuesday Morning  
Saul stared at me, dumbfounded. 

“Why… what are you…” he was practically pleading.

“Shut up and sit down!” 

Saul complied. I turned around to retrieve the catheter and suddenly he was on my back, reaching for the gun. I elbowed him hard to create separation and then I backhanded him with the gun. I had connected with his temple and he crumpled to the floor, hard. I think he was out, but to make sure he remained subdued I kicked him in the ribs several times.   
I put the gun back in my waistband and heaved him up into the chair. All this commotion brought on the obligatory coughing attack. I fell back into the faux leather chair to catch my breath. As I was getting up, he was coming to. He was clutching at his midsection and squinting at me.

“What are you… Please, don’t,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“Shut the fuck up!” I yelled at him, shackling his left arm to the arm rest. I grabbed the catheter. “Now hold still.”  
“Walt, what…”  
I held my finger to my lips and then threatened to backhand him again. He fell silent. I looked for a vein and made an attempt at sticking it. It took me three or four tries. Saul was diverting his gaze. I saw that a cut had opened up around his temple. Droplets of blood trickled down the side of his face. He raised a shoulder, trying to wipe away the blood.

Once I got the catheter inserted, I plugged in the IV drip bag and observed. The bag seemed to be dripping just fine and the fluid was traveling down into the catheter in an unencumbered flow. 

“Did you get that blanket I asked you for?” I queried. 

“In the kitchen,” he said. I found a big bag from Bed, Bath and Beyond and opened up the package containing a blanket. I draped it over him.

“I didn’t poison your chemo, Walt.”

“That’s nice, but guess what? I don’t believe you.” 

Saul, Tuesday Morning  
Walt ran the IV for about an hour. I felt dizzy and nauseous, similar to the way I felt on arsenic, yet distinctly different: no pins and needles feelings in my hands and feet, just a sickening acid ice water rushing through my veins. It chilled me to the core. But I wasn’t going to betray any symptoms that might send Walt into a homicidal tailspin.

Walt, Tuesday Morning  
I untethered Saul from the IV drip.

“Now, let’s see how you fare. When you ingest arsenic, you should see the results in four to six hours. When you administer it intravenously, you should see it much, much faster.”

“You’re a sick bastard. I didn’t try to poison you, even though I know you poisoned me with the Xanax.”

“Very good. Took you long enough to figure that out. The mortar and pestle in the glove box? _Stupid move._ ”

“OK, yeah, I _thought_ about poisoning you! Who wouldn’t?! But I _didn’t_ do it!”

“We’ll see about that.” 

I cleared off my chess board and brought it over to Saul, placing it on the ottoman. “Let’s see how you fare with a little game of chess,” I said.

“Christ, I’d rather not,” he replied. I gave him an imploring look. He could be so obstinate. 

“Yes, we’re going to play chess.” I set up the board.

“I’ll need my cheat sheet. It’s over on the hall piece.”

I retrieved his cheat sheet but said, “you need to memorize these moves. You can’t excel at chess until you’ve mastered the fundamentals.” Saul was always looking for shortcuts.

“I’ll get on that in my spare time,” he retorted.

We played a couple of turns, but his lack of intent to succeed robbed me of my competitive drive. I could have beaten him in four moves. I gave up on playing. 

I scoured the news, searching to see if Kuby had been successful. There it was: “Fire Damages ABQ Home”.

Saul, Tuesday Morning  
Walt was quietly reading his phone when he let out a malevolent chuckle. I doubted that I would share his assessment about whatever he found so funny. 

“Here’s an interesting story from home,” he said, then reading: “Albuquerque Home Damaged in Fire.”

My stomach dropped and again the room twisted.

“‘An Albuquerque man was hospitalized with smoke inhalation after a fire broke out at his home…’”

“You fucking bastard!!” I tried to stand up, but vertigo and the handcuffs sent me falling back into the chair. My ribs screamed at me.

“Let me finish the story. This is interesting. ‘Charles McGill, 60, is in stable condition at Presbyterian Hospital.’ Sixty, he’s quite a bit older than you… ‘According to the Fire Marshall, the fire began when a camping lantern set draperies on fire. McGill, whom neighbors describe as a recluse, purports to have electromagnetic hypersensitivity disorder and therefore uses no electricity in his home.’ See, now, this EMHS is dangerous business.”

My chest was heaving and I could feel tears forming. I turned my head away so that Walt wouldn’t see. But by the time he got to the end of the story, my shame had yielded to a deep anguish that I couldn’t suppress; I couldn’t hide my crying. I imagined the sheer terror that Chuck must have been feeling. It was all too much… Walt’s psychotic controlling mechanisms, his paranoia, the violence… The sobs hurt my ribcage and I hugged myself with my unshackled arm. 

I wanted to rage at Walt, but showing my anger was pointless, dangerous even. I took some deep breaths and then made myself say, “He got out alive? Thanks for that,” my voice sounding thick and foreign.

“I told my guy, in no uncertain terms, nobody gets hurt,” Walt replied. I guess he wanted to establish that it was a plan, not an accident. He wanted me to know that, on the flip side, if he desired someone hurt or killed then that would be the outcome.

Walt made me sit there for about four hours. He was watching for signs of poisoning. We didn’t talk much. He just played chess and read the news on his phone. I pretended to scan the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Instead, I was envisioning how I was going to get out of this mess. Fleeing was the only option, unless I wanted to kill Walt. And that just wasn’t something I was prepared to do.

But how to protect Chuck and Kim? I thought about contacting Howard; he cared about both Kim and my brother. But he would turn me in. I could send him a letter with no return address, but the post mark would still place me in Minneapolis. Then it hit me: Nacho! We had a weird relationship, a friendship almost. I didn’t think that Nacho would turn me in. And he could protect Chuck and Kim from whatever dangers they faced, if the price was right. Yes, Nacho was the solution. I almost smiled but had to check myself; I didn’t want to arouse Walt’s curiosity.

Taryn and Daunte were a bigger problem because I didn’t know any muscle in the Twin Cities. Plus Taryn had no inkling of who I really was. I worried over the problem for a long time and before I dozed off. 

At around 1:30pm Walt kicked at my foot and unlocked my handcuff. “Up on your feet,” he ordered. I stood up uneasily. “Walk around,” he instructed. I did as he said. I was feeling woozy and I wanted to puke, but compared to the worst of the arsenic, I felt all right.

“Chemo kicks my ass. How about you, Saul?”

I had to give him something, “I’m nauseous and dizzy and tired. That’s about it. I only had a small dose… what 20% of what you take?”

“I gave you 15%.”

Walt seem satisfied that any symptoms that I had were induced by the chemo and not something more nefarious. We set up the remainder of the drip for him. He was being nice Walt now. Could it be that he actually felt guilty about his overreaction to a crime I didn’t even commit? No…. It was all part of his plan to control me. All of it.

Since he was being friendly, and I couldn’t bear hanging out with him for another four hours, I tested him: “Dya mind if I take a nap? I do feel a little shitty.”

“Go ahead,” he said like an indulgent father. “Just be back down here at 5:30 to take the catheter out.” I wrapped the blanket around him. 

The more I moved, the more my head swam. It felt like I had venom pulsing through my veins, still, several hours after the chemo treatment. I wondered how long that sensation would last. I went upstairs, set my alarm, puked, and then laid down for a much needed respite from reality. I didn’t get it.

My dreams were filled with flames, Taryn and Daunte being engulfed by them. Acid ice water paralyzing me so I couldn’t get to them. A huge grave dug out of the desert floor keeping me from getting to Taryn.

Saul, Tuesday Night, Day 28  
At 5:15pm I got up from my nap. I was woozy and groggy, but otherwise felt okay. Downstairs, I found Walt dozing. I called his name and he awoke, thank God. I wouldn’t have wanted to shake him.

He narrowed his eyes and asked, “How are you feeling, buddy?”

Ugh, it was back to ‘buddy.’ “All right,” I told him. “Chemo sucks but it’s nothing like arsenic.” He laughed, I didn’t have the energy to. Anyway it wasn’t funny.

“How are _you_ feeling?” I asked him, pushed to do so only by the deepest memories of my mother imploring me to be polite.

“Not good. This isn’t one of those things that gets easier.”

“I’m sorry,” I lied, then said, “Walt, remember, tonight’s the night I have my date.”

“Are you up for that?”

“There’s no way I’m missing it.”

“I’d ask you to bring something back, but I don’t think the poisoner can trust the poisonee.”

“Damn straight you can’t trust me. The least I could do would be to spit in it.” Had we reached some creepy, joking detente?

I returned upstairs, took a quick shower, and got ready to see Taryn. I wasn’t sure what to wear, so I tried to hit that mid-zone between casual and conservative. I considered Paul Dobbs’ wardrobe, lamenting over the subdued, low profile colors. I selected a white dress shirt with vertical stripes and some grey dress slacks. 

From the lining of my suitcase I retrieved some index cards with phone numbers. I found Nacho on the list, memorized his number and returned the cards to the suitcase. As soon as I got in the truck, I dialed him. He picked up on about the sixth ring.


	12. All is Lost, Counselor

“Talk to me,” Nacho answered.

“This is your friend from the Ways and Means Committee,” I said referring to a scam we were involved in. He recognized me.

“Hey, what’s up? I saw you were in some trouble?” Nacho said.

“I am. That’s why I called. I need your help.”

“What’d you have in mind?”

“Protect a couple of people. I’ll pay you.”

“Protect them from what?”

“A mad scientist.” I gave Nacho a few more details. We discussed price. I would mail him the money the next day.

Talking on the phone for a lot of the drive meant I didn’t have a chance to pick up some flowers for Taryn. I hoped she wouldn’t mind. It had been a bad day.

I made it to Taryn’s five minutes late. If she noticed, she didn’t let on. She greeted me with a kiss that I simply melted into. That one kiss promised worlds that I couldn’t imagine, a world without Walter White, without constant fear…. It was so foreign that it scared me a little; I didn’t feel worthy. I pulled away before I could be consumed.

“What’s wrong… Paul. What happened?!” she asked, maneuvering me into the light so she could better see the cut on my temple. I stood there mute. “What hap… was it your brother?” Her voice was tinged with anger.

Just then Daunte appeared in the foyer. He bit his lower lip like he’d walked into something he shouldn’t have.

“Hey, my man,” I held out my hand to shake, but Daunte slapped it.

“I took the math practice test.”

“That’s great. How did you do?”

“Not so great. I have some work to do…. Hey, um, Paul, I made you a playlist.” He handed me a thumb drive. “That’s some of the music that I listen to.”

“This is fantastic! Thanks.” 

I got a good look at Taryn. She was wearing a simple black dress and an amazing necklace of black, red, and white beads. “You look stunning,” I told her. 

I took her hand and walked her out to the truck. “Sorry, it’s not much,” I said about the Ranger as I opened the creaky door for her.

“Don’t apologize… it’s more than a lot of people around here have…”

“You’re right… and I do kind of love this little thing,” I said. She laughed.

“That was nice of Daunte… the playlist.”

“What is that? …his hip-hop crap?”

“I guess. You know, he says he likes music with a social conscience.”

“Oh, please.”

“He’s a good kid…”

“Well, he’s taken with you.”

We fell into a silence. My usual repartee had been grounded by my preoccupation with Chuck. He didn’t do well in hospitals: all the machinery and lights and changes in personnel. People in a hurry who don’t take the time to understand his needs. And Kim—was she safe? Nacho had said he would get to her tomorrow. 

Silence wrapped around our conversation like a python. Usually, around Taryn, I couldn’t keep my mouth shout. The awkwardness lingered until Taryn mercifully broke it, though not the topic I wanted…

“Paul? What happened to your head? Don’t tell me it was your brother again.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” I stared straight ahead.

“Yeah, you’ve said that. It doesn’t hurt any less.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“Huh?”

“You said you were taking him to a doctor to get a diagnosis.”

“Oh, there’s no way he’s going to the doctor. Not if he doesn’t want to. And he doesn’t want to.”

“Then you need to get help. I’m scared for you, Paul.”

I didn’t respond. I was scared for me too, and for Taryn, for everyone. Concerns about Chuck reared up again. I wished I could discuss it with Taryn. Instead, I focused on driving like I couldn’t do two things at once. 

 

The restaurant had dark paneled walls, black leather, and a black and white checkered floor. It was one of those places crammed with the autographed photos of actors and actresses. We were seated in a crescent shaped booth beneath Erik Estrada, Will Smith and Jane Fonda.

“So, Daunte tells me you’re an art teacher?”

“Yes. Art history. It is very difficult, really infuriating some days. But I love my job.”

“Art history? Are you the picture lady?”

She smiled.

“I read about how testing pressure was forcing out art programs…” I said.

“Mmm mm mmm. Don’t even get me started. You know, I work at two different schools. Teach at one in the morning, the other in the afternoon.”

“That’s a grind.”

I ordered wine and we got an appetizer of sweet potato fries. We placed our dinner orders; Taryn ordered St. Louis Style Spare Ribs and I got the Baby Back Ribs.

As I was reaching for a fry, Taryn took my hand. “Paul, what’s going on with you?”

“I’m sorry, Taryn. I’m distracted tonight…”

“You can be real with me.” 

I agonized over what to tell her. There were so many levels of truth, and none of them would be good for this relationship. And then there was Taryn’s safety. And Daunte. I couldn’t protect them. Shit, I shouldn’t even be with her now.

“I’m not a good person… I’m sorry,” I said softly.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m not the person I’ve been pretending to be.” 

Taryn looked confused. Her eyes were darting around the table and finally rested on her glass of wine. She fingered it absently.

“We’re all pretending to be somebody. We make up our identity as we go along. We wear different masks with different people and at different times. I like the mask you’ve been wearing. And I know there’s a good man in there,” she said pointing to my chest. It was as if she already knew everything. I felt like she could see the real me. It inspired a bit of honesty.

“My brother kicked the shit out of me today… he knows not to hit the face…”

“Oh, Paul,” she said, covering her mouth.

“Frank has done some evil things…” 

“Wha…”

“I can’t be specific… Please understand…”

“You need…” she started.

“I’m afraid you’re at risk. He’s a very jealous person.” 

“Then you need to get help.” 

“It’s not an option… I wish I could explain.”

“And I wish I could understand.”

I had done it. I sabotaged the relationship. Past the point of salvation. Hopefully this would be sufficient enough to protect Taryn from Walt. But, my God, the selfish part of me was so angry at the magnanimous part.

Our salads arrived. We ate in silence for a few minutes.

“What kind of art do you teach?” I floated, desperate to re-engage. To be charming.

Taryn gave me a flat smile, as if she was trying to appreciate my effort at being conversational. But she didn’t. “Oh, you know, the classics. I don’t get much time with each student. I want to make sure they know the _Mona Lisa_ and _Starry Night_.”

“And what do you slip in there?” I asked. Now she smiled for real.

“African art and slave art… these kids need to know their history.”

“Slave art?”

“Yeah, the slaves made art. Some enterprising slave owners even sold the art of their slaves. And free women on the Underground Railroad made patchwork quilts. Hidden within were the routes to freedom, or so they say.”

“That’s fascinating. I’ve never heard about that. Sounds like there are some lucky kids in the St. Paul school district.”

“I work with some good principals. The system is pretty screwed up, but there are good people trying to make it work.”

Our entrees arrived and we fell into another silence. Then we talked about superficial things. Stuff about the theatre, our spouses. Taryn asked me if I’d ever been married. Truth was I had three failed marriages, but I took Paul Dobbs’ history, one ex, and chose one of my wives to flesh out a few details.

“She sounds sweet,” Taryn said of ‘Molly’.

“She was. I was an asshole… I was, ironically, going through some shit with my brother. He did some hurtful things.” I just seemed to be getting myself deeper into the morass.

“He… Frank? seems to dominate your life. Why do you live with him?”

“He’s debilitated with his electricity disorder. Somebody needs to help him.”

“Why you, Paul? He should be hospitalized.” When she said that word I again thought about Chuck in the hospital and almost choked up. I wanted to see him. After everything he was still my brother.

“I… I need one of those patchwork quilts…” I said wistfully.

 

It was over. I’d said too much and not enough. Why would Taryn want anything to do with me now? We talked politely. We laughed at silly things, but underneath it all ran the undercurrent of Walter White. I had aligned myself with a psychopath. I had jeopardized the safety of Taryn and her son. I was a mystery man, selfishly clinging to my ugly secrets, afraid to trust Taryn, afraid for her. 

We pulled up in front of Taryn’s house. I took her hand and said “Taryn, can you give me some time to work things out?”

She leaned over and kissed me. “I think so. I care about you, Paul, but I’m not going to put my boy at risk.” I glanced up into the rearview without thinking, surveying the street behind us, then shot my gaze back to Taryn.

I clutched at her hand. “I don’t want to put either of you at risk.” I kissed her again. It was a sad, lonely kiss, like grasping at a precious thing slipping away.

Walt, Tuesday Night, Day 28  
Saul came home at around 9:30. “I didn’t expect you for another hour or two,” I told him.

“We broke up.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, buddy.” I was standing in the kitchen, leaning on the counter. Saul walked up to me and smacked me in the face. I found myself flattened on the floor, stunned. Between the punch and the chemo I was rocked. Saul started to kick me. This brought on a coughing attack. The assault stopped. 

Saul stood hovering over me like a boxer, looking like he might continue the beating once I caught my breath. Instead he reached down and helped me up. He walked to the fridge, got a beer and asked me if I wanted one. Then he changed his mind and made himself a Rusty Nail. He slammed it down and poured another. I took the beer.

I stared at Saul. He stared down at a point on the counter.

In an even voice, I said, “that was unacceptable. There will be consequences…”

“There have already been consequences, Walt!” he yelled. “I don’t know what you want from me. You poisoned me. You could have killed me!”

“No, the dosing was very controlled. I know what I’m doing. If I wanted you dead, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” He swallowed hard at that. “And to answer your question, I want help with my affairs. Legal advice, a connection to the real world, and maybe a friend.”

“You’re bat shit crazy if you think we can be friends!” 

I didn’t know where this bravado was coming from. 

“And you know what? You’re going to start paying for my services,” he demanded. There was a long beat, “$50,000 a week. Retroactive. And you’re going to give back the money that you that you stole from me to pay Ed.”

“Or what?” 

“I walk.”

I laughed. “If you walk, your world will come crashing down so hard that you’ll wish you had been poisoned to death,” I warned.

“You can’t pull the walls of my world down without getting crushed yourself,” he replied.

“Don’t assume I wouldn’t. I’m a dying man with nothing left to lose.”

“Stop fucking with me!” He slammed the glass down, grabbed the whiskey bottle and shouldered past me heading upstairs.


	13. Reversal of Fortune

Walt, Wednesday Morning, Day 29  
Daylight came slatting in through the blinds and woke me up. I got the coffee pot started and looked out the living room window as I anxiously awaited my caffeine fix. I needed the jolt to jump start my day. I was still bleary-eyed from the chemo and the attack by Saul. 

The morning sun was a silver-ish orb, low in the sky. Moisture on the fallen leaves made them shimmer. I longed to go outside and just take an exploratory walk. Saul feels like a prisoner; he doesn’t know what imprisonment is! 

I was blazing angry at him. He had disrespected me and upset the entire balance of our relationship. He had such relative freedom compared to me that, of course, I had to exercise an iron grip over him. Now that grip was dangerously fractured. Things would have to change.

Still, Saul had won last night’s battle and I would have to give him a concession. I would honor his request to be paid. If that’s what he needed in order to feel like he was making a choice in staying with me, I could do that. After he left for work, I collected money from one of my blue bins. $200,000 for four weeks service, $250,000 that went to Ed, $100,000 for the failed hit man bid, and $35,000 for the fire. I rounded it to $600,000. I could part with that, but not with much more. It was more than 5% of what I had left after the disaster with Jack Welker…. 

Now it was time to go see Jack.

Saul, Wednesday Afternoon, Day 29  
When my alarm clock went off I was in a deep, troubled sleep. _Taryn and I were at the restaurant, but the restaurant was the theatre lobby. We were eating snails. Huge ones—eight inches in diameter. There was a fire and Daunte was trapped in the projection booth. A zombie movie was playing, and the only way to get to Daunte was to step through the screen. When I did so, I found myself in the middle of the movie. Walt and Chuck were zombies and they attacked me. I couldn’t get to Daunte and I couldn’t get back to Taryn. I looked down and I saw my skin starting to turn a bluish grey._

I struggled out of bed. My head was spinning from the alcohol and the chemo. My ribs ached and my temple throbbed. My stomach seized up and I groped my way to the bathroom to try to puke out the previous day. 

I got ready for work, choosing my most comfortable jeans and a baseball t-shirt, white with blue sleeves. Using bandaids, I tried to cover up both the crescent-shaped cut on my temple and the bruising that had emerged around it. When I touched the wound, it was like pressing a memory button. The previous day’s events came flooding back at me in a dizzying swirl of technicolor detail: the horrors of the chemo and the fire, the shipwrecked relationship with Taryn.

I tried to envision a circumstance where Taryn and I could come back together. I couldn’t see it. That realization unleashed in me a deep feeling of desolation. _Presumed dead_ echoed in my aching head.

When I got to work Lacey gave me the once over, scrutinizing my clothes, then resting her gaze on the bandaids at my temple.

“My dad is going to be here today. He wants to meet with you.” Her voice sounded taut, etched with concern.

A pit started growing in my stomach. “Any idea what he wants?”

Lacey shook her head no.

“Is it bad. Is there a problem?” I asked.

“No, not at all. I think your work is fantastic. I was frustrated when you were sick, but that’s not your fault.” Lacey started doing her walk-through of the theatre. She had a lengthy check list to complete: the cleanliness of the theatre, meter readings, making sure that each of a thousand light bulbs was burning. 

“Will you go downstairs with me?” she asked. Lacey didn’t like the basement; the poor kid had to go down there alone everyday, past the boiler to some dark recess where the electricity meter was located.

“Sure,” I said. When we got down there, the room reverberated with the sounds of the ice machine and the furnace blower. The place reeked of soda syrup and damp. We slipped through the narrow passage behind the boiler.

“One halloween,” she said, “an usher dressed as a ghoul hid down here to frighten me. Stepped out from behind the furnace and scared the bejesus out of me. I’ve been freaked out about coming down here ever since.”

“The ushers say someone died down here?” I asked.

“Yeah, there was a fire in the ‘40s. Supposedly a little girl was using the bathroom and came in here to escape the fire. She got lost and was trapped. I don’t know whether I believe it. But some of the ushers say they’ve seen her.”

“Yeah, a couple of them won’t do the evening meter readings,” I said. Now I could see why. It was creepy enough without the ghost story. “Hey, Lacey, can I use the computer on break to print out a playlist?”

“It’s true? You don’t have electricity?”

I smiled sheepishly. I was happy that my cover story was getting around. “What? Have the ushers been talking?” I feigned annoyance.

She nodded.

“Yeah, my brother is allergic to electricity.” 

“How is somebody allergic to electricity?” 

“It’s a real thing,” I said defensively, thinking of Chuck. “Electromagnetic hypersensitivity disorder.”

“Sounds like something for crazy people. Sorry.”

“No, you’re right. I don’t know if it’s real, but it’s real to Frank…. But anyway, the playlist?”

 

Alvesson arrived after the threading for the four o’clock shows. He came up to the booth and had a look around. He checked the cleanliness of the projectors, the checklists that I had created for each, and the computer settings for the automation that fires up each film. I felt like a Pfc. getting a once over from the drill sergeant. But since it was Wednesday, maintenance day, I knew he’d find everything to be impeccable. 

“Shall we talk in the office, Paul?”

We headed down to Lacey’s cramped office. Alvesson sat behind the desk. “We’ve been very pleased with what you’ve done here. I hope you know that.” 

I nodded, more politely than truthfully. 

“As I’m sure you know,” he continued, “projectionists are dying out. The few that have survived automation are now being replaced by digital.”

I nodded. _What, Lacey couldn’t fire me herself? She had to get Daddy to do it?_

“We’ll be making the transition to digital ourselves over the next twelve months.” 

I nodded again, feigning interest. 

“So, I’ve been thinking about other employment opportunities for you.” 

I imagine the glazed look started clearing in my eyes. “Oh, yeah?”

“I’ve come up with two possibilities. We’ll still need a projectionist for the chain. More of a roving booth technician. This would be serving all eleven theatres and rotating between them. You can set your own hours, but you’ll be on call. The other job is a manager at one of our theatres. That would be pretty much the same schedule you work now. Both of these jobs would involve a pay increase.”

I was ecstatic. I went from being fired to getting a promotion handed to me. But then the voice of Saul Goodman came into my head: ‘You’ve really made strides since _high school_ , Jimmy,’ the voice sneered.

“That’s very exciting. Thank you. Can I get back to you?”

“Of course. I can give you a couple of days. Think it over. Talk to Lacey. Talk to your family.”

We wrapped up and I headed upstairs to the booth. This new development presented some interesting opportunities indeed… a couple of possible scenarios for my endgame—whatever that was. I would definitely _not_ be discussing this with my ‘family.’

Saul, Wednesday Night, Day 29  
At midnight, as we had arranged, Nacho called me. I had the cell phone poised in my hand and answered before the first ring ended.

“What’s going on?” I asked by way of greeting.

“Your girl is a _hellcat_. She’s pissed at you, _ese_.”

“I imagine she is. I expected that. Is she safe?” 

“She’s safe. I’m going to stay at her place for a few days until your friend is out of the hospital.”

“And how is my friend?” I asked dreading the answer.

“Crazy, _ese_. He’s going nuts in that hospital. He’ll be lucky if they don’t lock him up.”

“I hope they do lock him up. Then he’ll be safe.”

“Don’t worry; I’ll keep him safe. He’s supposed to come home on Saturday. Then we’ll all go to his house where he can be comfortable. Hellcat’s ok with it; she’s not happy, but she’s ok.”

When I came home that night, Walt was not sitting in the blue velvet chair. On the kitchen table, there was quite a surprise. A pyramid of money: $600,000, according to a note from Walt. I sat down and counted every last dollar. It was all there. I placed the stacks of money in a recycling tote to carry upstairs.

I had thought that my money request would be greeted with a flat refusal or at least some arguing and haggling. I was dumbfounded that Walt relinquished so easily. Maybe I should have hit him a long time ago.

Taryn and Daunte were dominating my thoughts. I took out the print out that I had made of Daunte’s playlist and started downloading songs on to my phone. I played the first song, “It Was a Good Day” by Ice Cube. 

It was a bittersweet yet raw song about the things that constituted a ‘good day’ in the ‘hood. The most haunting line: “Plus nobody I know got killed in South Central L.A./ Today was a good day.” The words were bitterly ironic, the rapper mocking himself for his assessment of a good day. I thought about my own life. Yesterday had clearly been a nightmare, but today, today was a good day.

 

Walt, Thursday Morning, Day 30  
I woke up at a quarter to eight. Looking out my bedroom window I was greeted by a majestic snowfall. A little early in the season, I assumed, but I didn’t know much about Twin Cities weather. The snowflakes were huge and wet. It wasn’t accumulating on the concrete and asphalt, but the snow was clinging to everything else. The trees and electrical wires were all outlined with a pristine white accent—a real treat for a boy from California. I longed to be able to build a snowman for Holly or to have a snowball fight with Junior.

Saul came downstairs at around 10am. He usually left at around 11:15, so we had some time to talk. I asked him to sit down at the kitchen table.

“I got the money. Thanks,” Saul said.

“You were right that I was undervaluing your services… I hope you can understand that the poisoning was a control mechanism, albeit ill advised.”

“Are we going to hash through this again? Because there’s no scenario where I’m okay with being _poisoned_! That was pure lunacy… do you have anything else to talk about?” He pushed back from the table.

“Wait, wait. Yes, yes… something very important. I want to go back to Albuquerque.”

“What?!”

“Yes, it’s time to go back. I have to wrap some things up before I die.”

“When are you going? How will you get there?”

“Well, that’s where you come in… you’re coming along. You’ll drive me in the truck.”

“I’m not going on any suicide missions! And Albuquerque is a suicide mission.”

“No, I need you to come along. I’m going to take down Jack Welker and I need to get the money to Skyler.”

“How are you… no, I don’t even want to know.”

“Listen. Just think it over. There are so many details to be worked out. I wanted to get you started thinking through it.”

“I can think about it, Walt, but on the face of it it sounds like batting down a beehive while you’re covered with honey.”

“There’s my buddy with your colorful metaphors. You definitely must be feeling better.”

“Yeah, and I’d be great if I didn’t have a round of _chemo_ the other day.” He stood up, “look I need to get going. I want to give it some extra time to get to work with this snow.”

“I don’t think it’s accumulating on the street.”

“Well, here’s the thing about wet pavement… and trust me, I’m an expert on this… what looks like wet can easily be ice. Furthermore, people freak out driving in the first snowfall of the year. The best antidote: leave early and go slow.”

Saul, Thursday Afternoon, Day 30  
Walt was consumed with his revenge fantasy. He was willing to risk everything. But everything for Walt didn’t constitute much, not compared to me. I had plenty to lose. I could conceivably live out my fugitive life in peace. I wasn’t nearly as hot as Walt. My crimes were limited to conspiracy, money laundering, and flight from prosecution. If they pushed it, they could charge me with attempted murder, but I could beat that. 

My main problem was ridding myself of Walt. On any given day, I could just call the DEA and report that the great Heisenberg was living at 632 Beaver Lane, White Bear Lake, Minnesota. The problem with that, of course, was that immediately upon being taken into custody, Walt would return the favor. I figured I’d be 30 miles south on I-35 when they’d pull me over.   
Or, I could give myself a twelve hour head start and call at midnight from, say, Montana. But I’d have to ditch the truck and Paul Dobbs. And it was doubtful that Ed would set me up with a new identity. Too much risk for him. Besides, we weren’t exactly on friendly terms. 

No, the cleanest way for me was a dead Walter White. But I wasn’t about to kill him; first of all, I’m not a murderer and secondly, the man still scares the shit out of me. So, Walt going on a suicide mission was starting to sound pretty good. I’d just have to ensure that it was Walt’s suicide, not mine.

Walt had probably thought all this through already. He knew I was going to say yes.

When I arrived at the theatre I told Lacey that my ‘other’ brother had been in a fire in Phoenix and that I needed to visit him. She was justifiably shocked and very supportive. 

Saul, Thursday Night, Day 30  
It was a long night with three incoming films. I got home around 4am. Walt wasn’t waiting up for me. I knocked on his bedroom door. “Walt,” I called through the door. After a minute or so he dozily answered.

“What’s going on, buddy? What time is it?”

“I want to talk about Albuquerque.”

“OK, OK, great….” He retrieved his glasses.

We sat down in the living room, Walt in the blue velvet chair, me in the pleather one. 

“The plan has two key features,” Walt explained. “We’re going to start getting money to Skyler and we’re going to take out Jack Welker and his gang.”

“And how, dare I ask, are we going to accomplish these two gargantuan feats?”

“The first part is easy. We’ll do it just as you described. We’ll… _you’ll_ … rent out a safe deposit drawer and we’ll fill it with money. Then you’ll contact Skyler and get her the bank info so that she can retrieve the money.”

“You remember the part where I told you that wouldn’t work? That’s how Dan Wachsberger got killed.” My guts churned.

“It didn’t work because they used the same boxes repeatedly and the feds got wise to it. We will only use a box once. We’ve got to be nimble, stay ahead of the feds.” 

I shook my head. “But… that…”

“Let me tell you about my plans for Jack,” he interrupted excitedly.

Walt proceeded to outline some hair-brained scheme involving infiltrating the neo-nazi camp with a machine gun on an automated swivel. It sounded like something straight out of WWII, but I knew it was something out of the mind of a madman.

“Where do I come in?” I asked with trepidation.

“Depends on how much success I have with the automation… hopefully you’re not involved.” I figured that given time and resources nothing could stop Walt from building his killing machine just the way he wanted. “We need to procure supplies and you need to rest up. It’s a long drive. We’ll leave Saturday.”

“How ‘bout we leave tomorrow night?” I didn’t know if I would ever be coming back to Minneapolis, but if there was a chance I might, I wanted to preserve Paul Dobbs’ good name and—God help me—resurrect my relationship with Taryn in a Walt-less world. The sooner we got started, the better. Walt was pleased with my anxiousness to get moving.

“Good. Tomorrow night. Now tomorrow, I need you to buy some supplies. Most importantly we need to get a cap for the truck. You better get to sleep because you’ll need to get right on that in the morning.”

“Got ya. Hey, Walt, are the Xanax with the imprint OK?” I knew I was taking a huge chance. But why would he poison me now? It would risk the special brand of insanity that he planned to rain down upon Albuquerque. Besides, I think I was withdrawing from not taking my Xanax and Walt’s latest shenanigans were wreaking havoc with my anxiety level.

“Yeah, they’re OK, buddy.”


	14. The Departed

Walt, Friday Morning, Day 31  
Saul had agreed to return to Albuquerque with me. His participation was a critical aspect of the plot. But at the same time, I was suspicious of his motives. It felt like my grip on him was loosening ever since he hit me on chemo day. It was as though the arson had backfired and, instead of being cowed, he had been emboldened to act against me. Weakened by the chemo and having played all my best cards, my grasp on Saul was slipping away. Did he have an ulterior motive for returning to Albuquerque? It made me uneasy.

I wrote out a long shopping list of the supplies I’d need to construct my nazi killing machine: a garage door opener, a wire cutter, a pulley, remote car keys, a winch, and a drill. Saul sighed when he saw the list. 

“This will take half the day,” he muttered. 

He also needed to obtain a cap with black out windows for the truck. He was gone for several hours, but when he came back I was gratified to see the cap on the truck. We reviewed his purchases. Saul had gotten everything, but in some cases not quite the right thing. Was this deliberate incompetence to sabotage my efforts or an innocent mistake? The return trip to the hardware store could wait until Albuquerque. I might have more needs by then.

“Anything else you need before we go? The truck is gassed up and I got the oil changed,” he said.

“Sounds like we’re all set.” 

“In that case I’m gonna go lie down for a couple of hours. Say we start packing at around six?”

While Saul was napping, I worked on refining my plans. He was right about the safe deposit box… it wasn’t a good idea. I needed to come up with something else. Meanwhile, I started drawing up a design for a mechanism that could automatically shoot a gun and pan the gun in an arc while firing. Jack Welker wasn’t going to know what hit him.

Saul, Friday Night, Day 31  
I headed upstairs to lie down. But first I needed to get back to Alvesson. I punched in his number with a nervous energy. I can’t believe how much I cared whether I still had a job. But continued employment at the theatre chain meant continued access to Taryn.

I explained to Alvesson that I had to go out of town unexpectedly. Then I told him that I’d like to take the booth technician role if it was still on the table. I was relieved when he said that it was and we discussed start dates. He wanted me in the new job right away so we agreed I’d start in a week.

I awoke at 6:00pm after a fitful sleep. I had taken a Xanax and benadryl to try to help me relax. It hadn’t worked. I didn’t have dreams so much as intrusive thoughts about all the things that could wrong on this ill-conceived trip. I was worried about being recognized; I was worried about getting pulled over; and foremost I was worried about Walt. Did his list of Albuquerque to-dos include taking out his errand boy? I would expect Walt to follow a scorched earth philosophy.

I came downstairs. Walt had piled everything near the kitchen door. It was dark out, so the two of us were able to pack the truck. We made quick work of it despite the volume of Walt’s money and revenge equipment. We made a sort of nest for Walt who would be riding in the bed. 

By 7pm we were ready to go. Walt climbed into the back and I got into the driver’s seat and backed the Ranger down the driveway. The Ranger felt overburdened with its load. The cap on the back blocked out half the light that used to pour into the little truck. I was glad for the cap—it was while purchasing it that I realized I might need a set of back-up keys. I could see Walt setting off on foot, somehow pilfering the keys and stranding me with a smoking gun I couldn’t even use.

When we got to the highway, it became hard to communicate with Walt in the back of the truck due to the car sounds. It felt like driving alone which was better than driving with Walt. 

We made slow progress. I kept to the speed limit so as not to attract any attention. About an hour out, the classic rock station began to fade. Carleton College gave me another half an hour of alternative/ indie rock until that too turned to static. So I took out my phone and fired up the songs from Daunte that I downloaded.

“Are you listening to rap?” Walt shouted over all the noise.

“A friend made me a playlist,” I explained.

Daunte’s songs were about Katrina, trouble with the cops, and the economics of the ‘hood. But some of it was more ‘straight up gangsta shit’ than it was socially conscious. I smiled at his inclusion of “How to Survive in South Central” on his list.

By about 3am, I was too tired to go on. I had taken No-Doze and drank a couple of coffees all to no avail. I was nodding off and weaving. I exited at a truck stop so that we could discuss options. After some haggling we agreed that I could get a hotel room for a few hours. 

Walt decided to stay in the truck to protect his money, and, I imagine, to ensure that I didn’t somehow slip away without him. I, of course, was worried he’d do the same thing, stranding me in East Dumb Fuck, Kansas. So I made sure I had both sets of keys. I popped a Xanax to relax and had a few swigs of beer. Despite all my worries, I fell into a deep, coma-like sleep.

Walt, Saturday Afternoon, Day 32  
Saul handled all the driving and we made it to Albuquerque by 6pm Saturday, after Saul stopped for a luxurious nap somewhere in Kansas. There was much to do. I had revised the design for my machine gun and needed some new parts. We also needed to get a New Mexico license plate.

We headed to the junk yard. It was dark by now and the yard was closed. Saul had to scale the fence, find a junker that still had its plate, get the plate and get the hell out. 

From the bed of the truck I watched him scale up the ten foot fence. He hadn’t complained about his knee in awhile, but now I could see that it was still bothering him. Awkwardly he ascended the fence, then back down the other side. Dropping down, about four feet from the ground, seemed to jar the knee. He was limping as he trotted over to a pile of cars. I lost sight of him.

I heard the barking of a dog growing closer and then I could see Saul again. He was running as fast as he could with the bum knee. He scaled the fence with confidence, or perhaps desperation, and came down raggedly on the other side. He ran up to the truck and jumped in.

“Who’s chasing you?”

“Just the dog…” he was out of breath. “Thank… God for Slim Jims.”

“You gave the dog a Slim Jim?” I laughed.

“Here’s the plate,” he said, passing it to me.

I inspected it. It looked fine except it didn’t have a current registration.

“The plate is expired,” I said sourly.

“Are you kidding me? You want me to go into an auto graveyard, in the middle of the night no less, and find the car of some weirdo who continues to maintain the registration on an officially sanctioned piece of junk!”

We were on a dark street that had a few cars parked along it. 

“Do you have an Exacto knife or a Swiss Army knife or something,” I asked.

He paused as if in thought. “There’s a utility knife in the glove compartment.” He searched through the box and produced the knife.

“OK, go get a registration sticker from one of these cars.”

“I thought they were engineered not be fucked with,” he protested.

“Just do the best you can.”

He came back about five minutes later with not just one sticker but a small stack stuck together.

“That’s perfect,” I said. “This old truck would have several years worth of stickers. Do we have any adhesive?”

We headed to Home Depot. I told him to add a laser beam scope and adhesive to the list. He didn’t know what I meant by the scope. I told him it was a gun accessory for ‘hunting,’ and that it places a red beam on one’s target. “They might not have it here at Home Depot. If not, we’ll have to go to a sporting goods store with a good hunting section,” I said. 

Saul got the scope and the adhesive and the other items we needed. We pulled off into an alley and Saul switched out the plate with the one I had fixed up. He also removed the front plate. He placed the old plates under his seat.

“We don’t need those anymore. Get rid of them,” I said.

“ _I_ might need them. I want to go back.” He wouldn’t need them, but if thinking he was going to go back to Minnesota made him happy, I was all for it.


	15. Unforgiven

Saul, Sunday Morning, Day 33  
Early on Sunday morning, Walt declared, “I’ve got an appointment to see a man about a gun. I need you to drop me off at Denny’s.” With little concern for whether he was being seen, Walt definitely seemed to have a death wish. He’d probably rather go down in the midst of his revenge plot than be whisked away by the cancer. 

“While I’m doing that, I need you to pick something up from my house,” Walt said.

“You mean your seized former domicile. It’s probably Fort Knox.”

“So, you’ll break in.”

“And do what?”

“There’s an electrical outlet… I’ll draw you a map. You just need to unscrew it and remove the vial.”

“What? A vial? No!”

“Saul, it’s for a nasty woman.”

“OK, first of all, I wish you would stop using my name. It’s rude and dangerous. And, no! I’m not going on some commando mission to recover your ricin stash.”  
He backed down.

I dropped Walt off at Denny’s. We were to meet back up at the motel at noon. He’d be obtaining a car in the Denny’s transaction. It was growing increasingly uncomfortable to be with Walt. He had grown cavalier, like there was an inevitably about his death, or capture.

Glad to be alone for a couple of hours, I went to a diner for a leisurely breakfast. I had been thinking about it the entire drive; should I see Chuck? Did I want to see Chuck?

 

I pulled up at Chuck’s house and placed my phone in his mailbox. At first I didn’t see any fire damage. I started walking around the house and found smoke damage on the west side. The fire had painted black plumes around the windows. Other than that the exterior infrastructure appeared to be intact. I went around to the front of the house. Standing on the front porch, I hesitated for a moment, losing my nerve. I had stepped away from the porch when the door opened.

“Whoa, I almost didn’t recognize you!” Nacho said with a chuckle. “Isn’t it dangerous for you to come here?” I let myself in, walking past Nacho toward the living room. 

“Yeah, it’s dangerous for me to be in Albuquerque. But here I am.”

Kim heard my voice and she came running from the living room. “Jimmy!” she said, embracing me. Her hug was tight and long. When we let go she was crying. “Jimmy, I thought   
you were…” she began. She fingered my beard, perhaps mystified by my new appearance. 

“Let’s go sit down and we’ll talk. Where’s Chuck?” I asked.

“Upstairs,” Nacho said nodding his head upwards. Kim and I sat on the couch near the fireplace. There were about three feet between us. I rested my hand in the void. Nacho disappeared, giving us some space.

“He’s sleeping,” Kim said of Chuck. Her eyes traveled up and down my body, searching for something—the old Jimmy? They rested on my face. “Jimmy, you are so skinny. Tell me what’s going on.”

“How much do ya wanna know? I don’t wanna get you in trouble.”

“I’m a consenting adult,” she answered.

“Will you represent me? I mean, if I need it… will you?” I hadn’t planned to ask that… but it was a good idea. I could use an ally.

“Of course,” she replied. “But you have to know, I’m angry with you.”

“I get it. I’m sorry…” I paused. “Where to begin?…I’ve been representing Heisenberg for three or four years.”

“Oh my God. The rumors are true then?”

I nodded. “They could charge me with money laundering, criminal conspiracy, income tax evasion, profiting from a criminal enterprise, flight, and… and this one is just a remote possibility: attempted murder.” She looked horrified and I felt the desperate need to crack a joke. Instead I reached for a Xanax. 

“I’m going to get a drink. Do you want a drink?” I asked her. I knew I just threw an avalanche of moral indiscretions at her. I was asking her to absorb it all at once. I had become this person over a long period of time that started before Walter White had even entered the picture. 

I went to the kitchen and found my old supply of whiskey. Fortunately for me, Chuck wasn’t much of a drinker. “Murder, Jimmy?” Kim asked as I handed her a glass. 

“Attempted murder,” I said quietly. I told her about Brock Cantillo.

“I read about that poor boy.”

“It was an awful tragedy. I didn’t know why Walt needed that cigarette or what he planned to do with it… please believe me.” I laughed nervously. “I’m not a child poisoner…”

“Why couldn’t you say no; just walk away? You just couldn’t keep your hand out of the cookie jar, could you?” She asked icily. 

“Hey, I’m the one with metaphors…” I forced a laugh. “I tried to get out.”

“But you were like Al Pacino?”

“Yes! Yes, exactly. Walt intimidated me into staying. He’s killed several people. I thought I was next.”

“Nacho told me that White threatened you with my life? That White is responsible for hurting Chuck and burning his house.”

“Yes. Walt kidnapped me at gunpoint. We were at the extractor’s, getting a new identity, a new life. I was to go to Nebraska, but Walt and the extractor kidnapped me. Walt made me go with him to Minneapolis. We’ve been hiding there for the past month.”

“I thought you were dead… until Nacho…”

“I’m sorry, Kim. I’m sorry to be a disappointment and a shitty friend. I’m sorry Chuck got hurt. I’m sorry to have put you in danger.”

“How did you get so far in over your head?” she asked. I scrambled for some story, some explanation that could cover my behavior over the last few years. I had nothing. I couldn’t tell her what I had been telling myself: that the system, and life, had screwed me over. That I had talent, real talent, but my own brother wouldn’t give me a break. So, purely for survival, I turned to the people who would appreciate my talents: the desperate and the needy. Criminals who couldn’t get representation elsewhere. Criminals with deep pockets and no morals. And I was fucking good at it; it felt so great to be successful, needed, appreciated.

“I wish I had an excuse. It was straight up greed,” I said, mustering as much honesty as I had. I refreshed both of our glasses.

“What happened to you, Jimmy? Or maybe I _should_ call you Saul.” It was so precious to hear ‘Jimmy’ coming from her lips. And so painful to hear ‘Saul’ because I knew what it meant to her. That question hurt as bad as anything Walt had done and I realized the most damaging tool in Walt’s arsenal was to drive a rift further in my fragile relationships. Close me off… from everyone.

Just then, Chuck came down the stairs. I rose to greet him. He stopped short, about three feet from me.

“Your cell phone…” he asked in a brittle voice.

“The mailbox,” I replied, trying to sound compliant.

“Why did you come back?”

“I had to see you. I had to apologize for getting you hurt.” 

“And what’s to stop me from turning you in?” Chuck asked.

“There’s nothing to stop you… Please don’t.”

“Give me two reasons not to call the police.”

“I’m you’re brother. I’m repentant for my crimes. Some of the worst stuff was done under duress and extortion.”

“Extortion and duress? Really, Jimmy?”

“Yes! I tried to fire Walt as a client several times, but he always threatened me. Look at now, right now, I’m being extorted right now!”

I could feel Chuck’s skepticism penetrating into the annals of our shared history. _It’s just another of Jimmy’s scams… don’t listen, don’t believe._

“I know it sounds crazy, but you’ve got to believe me…” Chuck shouldered past me and sat down on the couch. I sat in a chair across from them. “Can I get you anything, Chuck?”

“Ice water,” he replied. I got it for him and filled my glass again.

“About a month ago I decided to skip town. I was afraid for my life. One of my clients, Jesse Pinkman, had kicked the shit out of me, and I didn’t know what was next. And Jesse was the docile one of the pair. Walt, Heisenberg, he’s the real maniac. He was getting desperate, his whole world was caving in and I didn’t know who he’d blame for what. I called an extractor so I could get out of town. But Walt was in the extractor’s pipeline same time as me.” 

I told them the rest, about their photographs and Walt’s threats. About the beatings and the arsenic and being Walt’s prisoner. Kim interrupted occasionally with an ‘Oh my God’ or a legal question. I left out some of the details: Taryn and the movie theatre. The scowl on Kim’s face was beginning to soften. Chuck had this inscrutable look: like he didn’t believe me, but on the edges empathy appeared to be forming nonetheless.

“Look, I know I’ve thrown a lot at you,” I said to both of them, then, turning to Kim, I said: “Take some time to process what I’ve said and then let me know whether you can represent me. Whatever you decide, I hope we can still be friends.”

“Chuck, how are you doing?” I made uncomfortable eye contact with my brother. 

“I’ve been better,” his posture was bolt erect and imperious. 

“No, really, how are you doing?”

“I had smoke inhalation—my throat is still sore from that. And I have some first degree burns on my hands.” For the first time I noticed the wrappings; I’d been so caught up in my own shit. “The hospital was hellacious… that was the worst part. Well, that and battling flames in my own home.”

“Chuck, I’m so sorry.”

“Well… you didn’t have to come here and…” there was an interminable pause, “I appreciate that.” 

I let out a deep sigh.

I told them I had to get going to meet Walt. I didn’t need to leave right then, but I had to get out of the house. Its dark stuffiness reminded me of Chuck’s betrayal—Chuck’s betrayal that began the slow spiral that brought me to this point.

Chuck remained on the sofa and Kim saw me to the door. We were both a little buzzed from the whiskey. “Don’t go back to him,” Kim implored.

“I have to, Kim. It’s almost over. I have to finish it.”

 

I drove a few hundred yards to a park and there I laid down on a picnic table under an olive tree. I had a good 45 minutes to kill. I set my phone alarm and stared up at the sky. The meeting with Kim and Chuck had been painful, but it was the right thing to do. 

Walt, Sunday Afternoon, Day 33  
Saul pulled into the motel parking lot about five minutes late. He parked next to the giant old Cadillac that I acquired in the transaction with the arms dealer. I came over to his window and said, “Let’s go. You’ll follow me. We’re going to the desert.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. _We’re_ going to the _desert_. Uhn-uh, I don’t think so. I don’t do deserts.” Saul protested.

“This isn’t an execution, Saul. If I’d wanted to kill you why bring you to New Mexico to do it? I could have just pushed you into White Bear Lake.” 

“You needed me to get you here. Now I’m expendable…. What are we going to do in the desert?”

I leaned into the truck and said quietly, “I’m going to build my doomsday machine.”

“And you need me for that?”

“Yes. Now take a Xanax and let’s get moving.”

I got into the Cadillac and Saul followed me out onto the highway. As I drove, I reflected on my conversation with Skyler. I think it went well. I was honest with her, honest with myself, something I hadn’t been since the cancer came. I had never before faced up to the inevitability of my own mortality and to the fact that it was coming sooner than it had a right to. Mortality caused me to strip away all the surface bullshit that had dominated my life. I finally told the truth about that. And I got to see Holly and Walter Junior. It was a good day… and yet there was so much more to do.

We drove deep on to the To’hajiilee reservation. After a couple of hours I got my mechanism engineered the way I wanted it. The machine gun would sit in the bed of Saul’s truck. Saul would be riding back there with the gun. I told him it was so he could make sure everything operated smoothly, though I was very confident that it would. 

The press of a remote control key would activate the mechanism, popping up the truck cap, raising the gun, and sending the gun in a slow arc of destruction while the firing mechanism went off. There would be complete mayhem at the neo-nazi camp. Anyone not prostrate on the floor would be eliminated. Since Saul would be in the bed of the truck with the gun, he was particularly interested in the mechanism that controlled the arc of the gun. I showed him how the gun couldn’t move beyond a 45 degree arc due to a stopping mechanism.

On the way back, Saul picked up some food and brought it to our motel room. I had the TV tuned to CNN. There was nothing new about Heisenberg. That was about to change. I turned the TV off and ate with Saul. We needed to discuss the plans for that evening. I was going to extort Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz. Make them believe that if they didn’t make regular payments to Skyler, say $1 million a year, then a hit man would gun them down.

Saul, Sunday Night, Day 33  
We pulled into a beautiful neighborhood in the foot hills of the Sandia Mountains. Walt had given me a rough map he had sketched from Google Earth. I was to cross back behind two enormous properties and then take up a position behind the third house. We were in luck. The house, the home of the Schwartz’s, had a wall to wall, floor to ceiling window in the back. I could see every inch of their spacious, gorgeously appointed living room.

I anxiously awaited Walt’s appearance, freaked out that a snake or a scorpion would be disturbed by my presence. After a couple of minutes Walt came in to sight in the living room. He had the unfortunate Elliott and Gretchen with him. I had the laser scope out. As Walt was talking to them, he positioned himself so that they stood facing him and the mountains. 

I turned on the laser pointer and aimed at Gretchen’s chest. Even from one hundred yards away I could see her posture tensing. Elliott looked at Gretchen and became anxious and animated, nervously exchanging with Walt. The whole thing lasted about five minutes. Walt escorted Elliott and Gretchen out of the living room and I delicately picked my way through the desert terrain back to the road where Walt picked me up.

On the drive home, Walt was elated. I’d never seen him happier. He gave me the blow by blow of how he had snuck into their home, disabled the alarm, and accosted them, directing them to the living room so that I could play the role of maniac hit man, always potentially poised out back, ready to do them harm if they didn’t do Walt’s bidding. It went ‘swimmingly,’ Walt reported. I, on the other hand, felt ill. I reached for a Xanax.

Back at the hotel, I poured myself a drink from the bottle of Dewar’s that I had repossessed from Chuck’s house. The whiskey was over ten years old, nicely aged. 

It was about 10pm and I was drained. It had been a day of my least favorite things: the desert and guns. I had gotten too much sun during our afternoon foray to the desert. Though the fall temperatures were cool, the desert sun was still potent. The combination of sun, whiskey and Xanax had left me in a daze. Walt was sitting at the little round table further refining the plans on his contraption. As terrible as the day had been, I knew that the next would be exponentially worse. I fell asleep lying on my back with my clothes on.


	16. Apocalypse Now

Chapter Twenty-Three: Apocalypse Now

Saul, Monday Morning, Day 34  
On Monday, Walt didn’t have much on the docket for me until nightfall. That evening we would be visiting the neo-nazi compound. I was terrified. I didn’t think it would be a good idea for _Saul Goodman_ to be going to a _neo-nazi_ camp. And I didn’t like the prospect of having the whole day with nothing to do but think about it.  
“Just don’t tell them my real name,” I reminded Walt.

“Which ‘real’ name?” he deadpanned, then shifted into a smile. “Don’t worry about it, Saul. They’ll never know you were there,” he assured me.

“Paul,” I said, almost desperately.

Walt set off on some ‘errand’ he had involving setting up the meet at the nazi camp. I went across the road to a seedy looking diner and grabbed the Albuquerque Journal and USA Today. I scoured both papers as I ate some French Toast and bacon. Nothing about me or Walt in either paper, thank God. It didn’t mean that it was safe to conclude that our reemergence in Albuquerque hadn’t been detected, but it was a good sign.

I thought about taking a nostalgia drive but then I realized the itinerary would be pathetically short. I didn’t want to risk going by my old house. As for Saul Goodman’s office, I realized with a note of sadness that I should just kick that bad boy into the past. I didn’t need to see if the Statue of Liberty was still inflated or if my Caddy was still parked out front. Albuquerque was dead to me, or maybe, I was dead to Albuquerque…

I thought about going to see Kim, but it was a Monday. She’d be at the office. I couldn’t just stroll into HHM and say ‘hi.’ I walked back to the motel and had a glass of whiskey. I downloaded songs for Daunte. I scrutinized my list. The songs were about Katrina, race relations, trouble with the cops, the difficulty of living in the ‘hood. I smiled at the congruity between Daunte’s list and mine.

After that I watched a couple of movies. I hadn’t watched many films in the past few years, but the movie theatre had rekindled my love of cinema. I watched _Zero Dark Thirty_ and _Lincoln_ while I steadily drank myself into oblivion. When Walt returned from his mission, I was sleeping off the whiskey.

“Jesus Christ, Saul, the whole bottle?” Walt complained.

“No, the bottle wasn’t full,” I wobbled. “What time is it?”

“4pm.”

“Oh, we’re fine, I have five hours to sleep this off…”

Next thing I knew it was eight o’clock and Walt was waking me again.

“You need to get something to eat. Can you drive?”

“I don’t know,” I said wiping my face to try to push the stupor away. I got to my feet. “Yeah, I can drive. What do you want?”

 

Saul, Monday Night, Day 34  
Walt drove the Ranger into the neo-Nazi compound. I was hidden in the bed of the truck in an uneasy co-existence with Walt’s rigged up machine gun. I was there to act as a back-up to his remote control: “My insurance policy,” as Walt had described it. We stopped at the gate. Two goons asked Walt some questions that I couldn’t quite hear. One of them got in the passenger seat and directed Walt to the clubhouse. 

Walt backed the truck in and got out with the thug. I could hear muffled voices. I was terrified that the back-end would be opened. Walt had given me his handgun, and I clutched it in a sweaty hand. An army blanket had been draped over the machine gun and I delicately peeled it back as the voices died out. I assumed that Walt had successfully made his way into the clubhouse. 

I didn’t dare peek out the back window… that was getting too close to the business end of the machine gun. The gun would swivel along an arc as it fired. A 45 degree arc. Walt had demonstrated the gun’s firing mechanism to me. It took a lot to convince me that there was no way for that gun to move more than 45 degrees. I would be positioned in the front of the bed, ‘safely’ behind the gun. 

Both Walt and I had modified remote control car keys. The lock button would engage the battery which would cause a winch to pop open the back end of the truck cap and then the gun would rise up and start automatically firing, slowly sweeping back and forth in its 45 degree arc. Walt was a genius. A maniac, but a genius. He knew about far more than chemistry… if only he had turned his talents to moral pursuits… if only _I’d_ turned my talents to moral pursuits…

Walt had instructed me to wait for five minutes and if nothing had happened, I should activate the gun. The five minutes were agonizingly long. I popped a Xanax and swallowed it without water. I wanted to crawl out of the bed of the truck and just run. And I would have, but I had a feeling that one of the goons was still out there.

I thought about Taryn. What would I tell her? Was there any chance I could salvage things? I reminded myself that the only way I’d see her again was if Walt died. And Walt planned to survive this lunatic mission. He’d made calculations for the gun to fire at a level four feet. He planned to be on the floor when the gun started firing. But what if the gun started firing earlier than planned? Or lower?

With shaky fingers, I disconnected the machine from the battery. As soundlessly as I could, I crawled around to the device that held the gun in position. I ratcheted it down a couple of notches. Then I returned to my spot behind the gun and reconnected the battery. I checked the countdown timer on my phone. Three minutes left. I sucked in big gulps of air, trying to resume natural breathing.

I wasn’t sure what effect repositioning the gun would have. It would probably fire on an angle hitting the floor at some point in the room. It might miss Walt entirely, or catch him where he lay. But the chaos would be complete. 

With two minutes and fifteen seconds left to go, I was overtaken by the anxiety of simply waiting. I told myself it was a calculated decision to surprise Walt. I hit the button on my remote. The cap popped open as expected and the gun rose up. I could now see that, indeed, one nazi was standing behind the truck. He reached for his gun. He saw me. He raised his gun and just as he did, the machine gun began rapidly firing. The bullets cut him down. The gun strafed the building, boring away big chunks of concrete.

The sound of the machine gun reverberated in the bed of the truck. It was a deafening, frightening, all consuming roar. I covered my ears and began screaming as if I needed to hear my own voice to know that I was still alive. My cries mixed with howls coming from the carnage inside the building. I watched the gun, pivoting along its arc. It kept lurching along, inching toward me with no signs of retreating. 45 degrees, bull shit, that gun wasn’t going to stop! 

The battery was within reach so I disconnected it again and the gun sputtered to a halt. I inspected the apparatus. Sure enough the stopping mechanism that Walt had shown me didn’t look right. A screw was missing. There would be nothing to stop the gun in making a full 365 degree sweep. My heart rate increased until I thought the organ would pound right out of my chest. I could actually hear the blood pulsating through my neck and head.

Return fire emerged from the clubhouse, piercing the bed of the truck. Metal and bullets flew around me. Again, I clutched my head. I felt a ripping sensation in my shoulder; it blew me back into the cab window. It felt like a flaming golfball had rocketed through my shoulder, but I didn’t have the luxury of being injured. Besides, too much adrenalin was coursing through my body for me to be fazed by a gunshot wound. 

I ratcheted the gun back along its arc, pointing it out the back of the truck. I reconnected the battery. The gun began firing and slowly swiveling again. Once the gun turned away from the back, I scurried behind the weapon and reached the back of the truck. I kicked opened the back end and rolled out onto the ground. 

The thug was there, lying on the ground. He’d lost a tremendous amount of blood. He raised up his head. I stayed low to the ground, showed him my gun and then crawled around the other side of the truck. The gunfire went on for what seemed like forever and then, mercifully, the ammunition ran out and the machine gun fell silent.

I was almost deaf. I heard the faintest muffles of yelling. I crawled up into the driver’s seat and, using my spare keys, started up the engine. I was about to put the truck in gear when it struck me that something was wrong. 

I checked the glove compartment. Walt’s wallet had to be there, he would have wanted to protect his new identity from Jack’s people. But the glove compartment was empty. I checked under the seats: nothing. Shit!

I steeled myself for what I had to do next. I surveyed my surroundings. No movement anywhere. Not a sound, other than the machine gun turning on its arc, clicking as it tried to fire an empty ammo belt.

I climbed out of the truck and crouched along the side of the truck. The injured nazi lay motionless in his pooling blood at the back end of the truck. Still crouching, I ran over to the clubhouse door. I said a silent prayer to a god I didn’t believe in and then slowly turned the knob and pushed open the door. 

The room was a grisly sight. Bodies contorted in awkward postures lay everywhere, their life fluid oozing out. A coppery stench of blood melded with the smoky odor of gun powder. Weeping bullet holes peppered the walls. 

I didn’t know Jack Welker by sight, but an older man that I took to be him had been nearly cut in two, sawed off just above the knees, lifeless, a look of disgust etched on his face. I heard muffled groans, but couldn’t find their source, nor did I want to: a living nazi in this mess would only present complications that I couldn’t face. I clutched my handgun harder; it seemed wholly inadequate to the situation.

“Saul?” I heard my name called, an urgent whisper—the ghosts taunting me? “Saul?” it came louder—I flinched. Then slowly I turned around to find, sprawled out on the floor, Walter White. He was covered in blood; it was impossible to say where the blood came from and whether it was his. His lips appeared to tremble, suppressing a cough, then blood stippled his lips. He was a ghastly sight, but I forced myself to do a visual inspection. Most of the blood on the face and upper extremities was a fine mist, apparently spray. But a flowering blood spot seemed to be growing on his jacket, at his midsection, and he clutched at it. His legs, too, were spotted with spreading stains. It appeared he wouldn’t be able to gain his feet.

With great reluctance, I moved closer. I feared that if I touched him, he could suck me into death with him. He would not let me go easily after his weeks of meticulous plotting and intimidation. I reached for his jacket and Walt gripped my hand; he held it like doing so was his last connection to the world of the living. There wasn’t much strength, only desperation. I ceded my left hand to him. With my free hand, I slipped the gun into my back waist band and then began exploring the pockets of his jacket, searching for the wallet. It was not there.

It must be in his back pocket, I concluded, swallowing down bile over what I had to do next. But a fortuitous glance up saved me from the grisly task: lying on the pool table, I spotted not only Walt’s wallet, but his car keys too. I pulled away from Walt’s clutches, his hand feeling cold and death-like against my skin, his grasp more of a reflex than a conscious act.

My hands fumbled through the wallet and I verified the most important contents: the Frank Dobbs’ ID and the hotel room key card. I turned back to Walt. His breathing had grown shallow and his eyes rolled back in his head. I took the gun from my waist band and leveled it at him. I looked around the room to see if there were witnesses. Some of the nazis were still alive, but engaged in their own death struggles. In my mind’s eye, I saw Taryn and Kim and I hesitated, my finger hovering on the trigger.

“Saul, end it,” I heard him say, yet I knew that Walt had not spoken the words, rather the words just sort of emanated from his being, hovering there like a shared thought. And though he had not said the words, Walt had commanded me just the same. The pistol was growing heavy in my hand, I could see the dull black weight of it shaking under my uncertainty.

“It’s Paul, goddammit,” I said, easing off the trigger. 

I again surveyed the room. Everyone was dead or dying, no one was making any threatening moves. I slipped out of the clubhouse and ran to the truck. It fired up reluctantly. 

As I approached the compound gate, I saw a figure in the rear view mirror. He raised a gun and fired several rounds at the truck then fell to his knees. The gate was locked, so I revved the engine and crashed through. 

I drove about a mile or two and then pulled over to close the cap and disconnect the gun from the battery. Blood had drenched my shirt and I was feeling shaky. I got back in the truck and called the veterinarian who specializes in treating people.


	17. Live and Let Die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello All,  
> Sorry it has been such a long time since I posted. I moved and was busy with packing/unpacking, getting oriented etc. Hope you enjoy the next chapter!

Chapter Twenty-Four: Live and Let Die

Saul, Monday Night, Day 34  
The vet met me at his office. He showed me inside to a small surgical room that had a midget size examination table—it was fitted to accommodate dogs, not men. I got onto the table, my legs dangling off the end. The doc took one look at my shoulder and told me, “You really should go to the hospital. I don’t normally send patients away, but your shoulder is pretty ground up.”

I swallowed hard. “Not… an option,” I struggled to say.

“OK, then, here’s what we need to do. I’m going to give general anesthesia, plus I have to strap you in. I can’t have you waking up in the middle of things…” I didn’t hear whatever else he was saying. He had stuck me with a needle and I started feeling kind of floaty and warm and then I was out.

When I woke up, I found myself strapped down to the metal table. For a moment I thought Walt was responsible. I cried out, “No, no, no!” 

Apparently, the doc was sleeping on a cot in the same room. “Saul, you’re okay,” he came to my side and gently shook me. “Saul, wake up. It’s Dr. Markham.”

I came to and remembered why I was there. My shoulder was blazing with pain.

“Can you… you give me something…” He was already prepping a needle.

“You’re going to need to get to an M.D.” I couldn’t keep my eyes open. “Are you with me?” He slapped me lightly. “Saul? I don’t want this thing getting infected. There was a lot of debris in there. I pulled this out.” He showed me a petri dish. Inside was a bloody object, dark green in color.

“What’s that? Part of the truck?” Glad I no longer had truck parts submerged in my body. “Sleep?”

“Yeah, you can sleep here for a few more hours. Then you’ll have to get out before my staff arrives…” He was saying something about the cot, but I had faded out again.

Dr. Markham woke me up at 6:30am. “OK, time to go. Get plenty of rest, stay hydrated and get to an M.D.” He gave me a scrub shirt to wear back to the motel, my own shirt having been destroyed. He fashioned a sling for me using gauze. Giving me some extra gauze for the sling and to dress the wound, he said, “You can get a real sling at Walgreen’s.”

Saul, Tuesday Morning, Day 35  
I returned to the motel and followed the first part of Markham’s advice, getting another four hours or so of sleep. 

Some unsavory tasks remained. I needed to unburden the truck of the machine of death. I also had to pack up all of our belongings from the motel room, including Walt’s bins. 

I headed out to the desert, back to the place where Walt had constructed the killing machine. I scanned the horizon in all directions. Nothing but a pristine desert landscape. No dust plumes from cars, no giveaway glints of sun hitting glass. I seemed to be utterly alone. 

I wanted to bury the gun but I didn’t have the strength. Instead I hid it, the apparatus, ammo box, and the remotes behind a boulder. The gun weighed a ton, the weight of death, I imagined. I had to drag that sucker from the truck to its final resting place. The effort of it seemed to tear at my stitches. I had to rest frequently.

Returning to the motel, I began the difficult task of loading up the money. I didn’t want it, but I couldn’t leave it in the motel room. I could barely get the thing done, the bins seemed to have doubled in weight. When I was finished loading the truck, I made a bag of ice. It was painfully soothing. Dr. Markham couldn’t give me a prescription for painkillers—anyway I couldn’t just walk into a pharmacy and get it filled. At least not in Albuquerque. But he did give me a few vials and a needle. I had never stuck myself before, but desperation made it an easy affair. 

Before departing, I did a quick inspection of the truck. There were a bunch of bullet holes, all in the back end. I wished they were on the side instead. If a trooper got right behind me, I would be screwed.  
At noon I pulled out of the motel parking lot. I tuned the truck radio to Coyote 102.5 and was pleased to be greeted by “Take It Easy,” by the Eagles. Boy, did I ever need a fortuitous musical offering. When I got out of the radio station’s range, I put my phone up on the dash and played Daunte’s list, which was now a combination between his selections and mine. The first song to come up was one of mine, K-Ci & Jojo’s “Life.” Not exactly a Motown classic, but a hauntingly poignant R&B song nonetheless. The lyrics practically brought me to tears:

“Reckon I’d fly away/  
'Cuz it's too much for the man/  
Shouldn'ta gone down this way/  
What happened to my master plan…. /  
So how did I get life?”

I thought about Walt. It made the most sense to think that Walt had died from his wounds, but he was a feisty S.O.B. I wasn’t going believe he’d died until I had evidence. If Walt did survive, what would be his next move? I’d be his number one target. I left him there to die _and_ I took his last penny. 

It wasn’t lost on me that Walt tried to kill me with his machine gun contraption. Thank God I had paid attention as he was building the bloody thing. Asking questions like an annoying pest had probably saved my life. 

But there was a horrendous truth I had to face: since I tampered with the gun, they could now charge _me_ with _murder_. Regardless of what happened to Walt, the authorities would be looking for an outside shooter. If either of the two goons survived—or the figure in the rear view—the authorities might even have an idea of what the truck looked like. Even so they could probably use the tire tracks to figure out what kind of vehicle had been involved.

I needed to change out the New Mexico license plate and I needed to eat: I had to keep my strength up. I got off the highway in Tucumcari and pulled into a diner, Kix on 66. I was wearing a dark henley shirt under a sling I got at Walgreen’s. In the rest room, I peeked under the shirt to look at the bandage. There was a spot of blood growing on the gauze, but it couldn’t be seen through the shirt. From what I could tell, the back of my shoulder looked okay, no obvious bleeding. I wore the LA Dodgers baseball hat that Ed had given me and kept my head down.

I ate slowly. I knew I couldn’t push myself too hard. Plus I needed to put some separation between me and the cars that I had been driving with. I couldn’t afford to have someone notice that my truck suddenly had different plates. In fact, that point seemed important enough that I decided to reroute. Checking my phone, I charted a course northeast from Tucumcari on highway 54 toward Wichita. 

I drank up my orange juice, finished my eggs, and got back on the road. About five miles northeast of Tucumcari I found a dirt road and drove a few miles out into the desert. I switched out the plates and got back on the highway. I decided that the detour onto the smaller highway was a healthy practice; at lunch I would map out additional detours where I hoped I’d be less likely to encounter state troopers. 

At the Kansas/Texas border I detoured north to pick up Highway 56. This took me to Dodge City where I planned to stay. I was drawn to the Thunderbird Motel, taken in by the classic Route 66 road sign and the address—Wyatt Earp Boulevard. In actuality, the hotel was rebuilt and resembled a Hampton Inn. So much for romance. I grabbed a quick bite to eat and brought some essentials into the room.

I got some ice, filled a bag and applied it to my shoulder while nervously watching CNN. I’d been watching for about half an hour when it came on. A picture of Walt, with the voiceover: “Walter Hartwell White, the Albuquerque drug kingpin known as Heisenberg, has been found dead inside a neo-nazi compound…” I let out a howl of relief; I could barely calm myself to listen to the rest of the news cast. 

“White, along with eight members of a neo-nazi group, was killed in a hail of bullets, the apparent result of an assault with an M60 machine gun. Police said the shooter and weapon are still at large…. White was wanted for a series of crimes related to his drug empire. In particular, he was sought in the disappearance of DEA agents Henry Schrader and Steven Gomez.”

There was no mention of me, nor the Ranger, nor any survivors. Eight dead nazis… I should have counted them; it sounded right. Of course, there was no telling what information the police might be withholding from the press. But the key thing was that Walt was dead! I couldn’t even remember how to feel the elation that passed over me. I was out of Walt’s hellish prison. Taryn, Daunte, Kim, Chuck were all safe! 

I drifted off into a peaceful sleep. But deep in the morning, the mood of my sleep shifted, becoming nightmarish and fitful. I awoke at 6am covered in sweat. “The shooter is still at large,” was echoing through my head like a stray dog looking for food. The police probably didn’t know who they were looking for, yet, but they were looking. 

I wish I knew exactly where I’d hidden the gun and its contraption: that way, if I were caught I could demonstrate that the gun fired automatically, that there was no ‘shooter’ per se. Walt died at his own hands. I got up and took some notes on where the gun was located, not trusting that my memory would hold on this detail. Of course I knew that the notes could be potentially damning all by themselves. I hid them in the lining of my suitcase.

Saul, Wednesday Morning, Day 36  
I was wide awake now. I took a shot of painkillers and sat for another round with an ice bag, watching CNN. The story aired again but there were no new details. I stopped at the Denny’s before I got the hell out of Dodge. My plan was to make it to Des Moines. If I could do that, it was only another four hours or so to Minneapolis… I could theoretically make it to work for the evening shows and the tear downs and assemblies on Thursday. Hopefully, I would earn some goodwill with Lacey, or at least stop chopping into whatever goodwill I did have.

I stayed off the interstate again. The drive was slow and uneventful. My shoulder was throbbing and I feared that meant infection. Though the bullet hole was through and through, it left debris, and Markham didn’t seem at all confident about his ability to get it all out with his crude surgical set up. I probably should have listened to him and sought out an M.D., but I couldn’t have faced the questions. Seeking legitimate medical assistance in New Mexico would have been a sure fire prison sentence. But I was going to need to get help at some point, I couldn’t even change the dressing on the back-end of the wound.

I turned my attention to more pleasant thoughts and called Nacho. If he was at Chuck’s, he wouldn’t answer. His phone would be out in the mailbox. I left a message, “It’s over,” I said, “Call me.” 

A couple of hours later Nacho did call. “Thanks for all of your help,” I told him. “I won’t be needing your services anymore.”

“I saw that. Congratulations, _ese_. So, you’re a free man.”

“For the most part. I trust you received the package.”

“I got it. I’ll be checking out of the ‘hotel’ today,” Nacho said. “I don’t recommend this particular hotel.” We both laughed. Laughter felt like a long lost art.  
“No, it’s kind of old-fashioned and stuffy,” I agreed.

In two days, I would see Taryn. But what would I tell her? I could tell her the entire truth, but there was some ugly shit in there. _Murder._ There’s really no good way of talking that off. No, I’d have to leave that part out. Explain how Walt’s death was his own psychotic making. I could emphasize the mindfucking that he had orchestrated. I could convince her that I never did anything that bad, and that what I did do was motivated by protecting others.

I was a grade A liar, more comfortable in the imaginary worlds that I created than in reality. But there was something repulsive about the idea of lying to Taryn. If the relationship was to survive I’d have to man up and tell her the truth. The realization was deflating and cut into my relief over Walt. Walt had only been the most significant of a hornet’s nest of problems that I had to unglue myself from.

I stopped for lunch outside Topeka and picked up some supplies at the Target. Dark shirts, more gauze and tape, sleeping pills, whiskey. I arrived in Des Moines around 6pm and was thankful that I’d have an early night; I needed the sleep. I ate a quick dinner while scanning through the USA Today. There was an article about Walt’s death, but nothing different from the CNN report. 

Back at the hotel, I changed the dressing on the front of my shoulder. I was alarmed to see that the wound was now ringed by angry looking red skin, one of the signs of infection that I had read about online. I got a bag of ice and drank a couple glasses of Dewar’s. Then I stuck myself with a shot of painkiller, took the sleeping pills and crawled into bed by 8pm.


	18. Stand by Me

Saul, Thursday Morning, Day 37  
At around 10am I was awakened by urgent knocking at the door. My heart leapt into my throat. The gig was up. The knocking continued followed by the click of a key card. Someone opened the door but was stopped by the security lock. “Housekeeping,” came an accented voice.

I took a deep sigh and said “Thank God,” to myself. 

“Not now,” I yelled back, conscious that my voice sounded weak.

“Housekeeping,” she repeated.

“No, gracias,” I told her, “later.” She finally went away.

I was about to crawl out of bed when I realized I was in trouble. My sheets were soaked and I had the chills. My shoulder was continuing to spot and had made a bloody mess of my t-shirt. Worse, there was blood on the sheets. 

I changed my clothes, and wrapped myself in the bedspread from the other bed. When my shaking had died down, I took a painkiller and changed the front bandage. There was some nasty green colored drainage and the wound smelled funny. I had all the signs of infection. I took a hand towel from the bathroom and did my best to cover the wounds with the towel so that the sheets wouldn’t be soiled. Then I crawled into the second bed and hoped I could somehow sleep off the fever.

I woke up a couple of hours later and I knew a few things: I wasn’t going to just sleep off the fever, I couldn’t make it to Minneapolis, and I was fucked. I called the front desk and let them know I’d be staying another night and that I didn’t want to be disturbed.

I forced myself out of bed and gathered up the soiled sheets and took them to the truck. Then I called for a cab and went to the hospital. Once at the Emergency Room, I was admitted pretty quickly, which I took as a bad sign. They made a cursory examination and decided I needed surgery right away. I had just enough time to call Taryn.

“Hello,” she said. There was no recognition there. Still, I melted to hear her voice. I was so grateful that she was no longer in danger that I started to get choked up.

“Hi, Taryn, it’s Paul.” How I had been longing to make that simple statement… but there was a long pause and I worried that it was too late, too complicated.

“Paul, it’s good to hear from you,” she said, sounding devastatingly neutral.

“Taryn, I have so much to explain to you…” I said, my voice weak. “I’m in the hospital in Des Moines. Can you come see me? I know it’s crazy, but I’ll tell you everything.”

“Why are you in the hospital?” she said evenly. She had poured concrete around her heart.

“It’s very complicated. I… I’ve been shot.”

“Whoa, whoa… what?!” she stammered.

“Frank is dead.”

“And he shot you?” she asked.

“It’s complicated… he was involved. He tried to kill me.”

“Oh my God, Paul.”

“Can you come here? I’ll explain everything and if you don’t like it, walk away… I’ll leave you alone.”

“I need some time to think.”

“OK,” I agreed. 

“Can you call me in about two hours?” she asked. “I need to get back to class now.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, then added, “Taryn, it’s great to hear your voice. I… I didn’t know if we’d talk again…”

They were coming any minute to take me to surgery. I listened to the playlist to try to calm down. Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy, Mercy Me,” came up in the rotation. I enjoyed the ambience of the song, the tranquilizing guitar strumming, Marvin’s smooth voice, and the woeful chorus. It was strangely comforting. I didn’t feel good about the conversation with Taryn; she’d seemed distant, reserved. But I couldn’t blame her for that. 

They came and prepped me for surgery. They gave me something to relax and right away I slipped into a dreamy consciousness.

I woke up a couple of hours later in a misty fog. For a minute I didn’t know where I was and that was frightening. There was a nurse there and he tried to calm me down. “You’re in the hospital, Mr. Dobbs. You’re waking up from surgery. Remember?” Mr. Dobbs? What was he talking about. Where was Walt? I grew panicky. “Your shoulder, remember?”

Yes. My shoulder hurt. The pain of it pulled me back to reality. “Where’s my phone?” I asked him and he produced it from a drawer in the nightstand. “I have to make a call,” I told him.  
“First, let me take your vitals,” he answered. When he left, I called Taryn. 

“Hi, Paul.” She said, sounding more forgiving than before.

“Hi, Taryn. I’m sorry I’m late. I’m just getting out of surgery.”

“I’m en route… I should be there in about three and a half hours,” she informed me.

“Wha… that’s… that’s amazing. Thank you! It will be great to see you.”

“Not so fast, I’m coming to kick your ass,” she laughed.

“And I deserve it, but I hope you won’t be disappointed because it’s already been done…”

Saul, Thursday Afternoon, Day 37  
I was sleeping when Taryn arrived. She awoke me by gently shaking my left shoulder. I still had the fever; they were pumping me full of antibiotics and giving me acetaminophen.

“Paul, you’re burning up.”

“You’re here!” I said, squinting at her. I reached for her hand with my left hand and she took it. “I can’t believe you came…”

“Like I said before, Paul, I believe that deep inside, no matter what you’ve done… deep inside… hear me… you’re a good man.”

I laughed weakly at the irony of her use of ‘good man’. Unfortunately she was about to learn that some part of me was a bad man, bad to an extent she couldn’t be imagining. I was petrified that we didn’t have enough of a foundation to withstand the ugly truths I had to reveal.

“I’m mostly mad because you wouldn’t trust me with your story. Now tell me what happened, baby.”

“It’s a long story, Taryn. To make sense of it, I have to go back a few years.” I had to start with the fall of Jimmy McGill, so I told her about Hamlin Hamlin and McGill and Chuck’s betrayal. My own brother didn’t have faith in me and chose protecting the image of his vaunted law firm over giving me a chance to prove myself, even after all the hard work of law school, and passing the bar. He was punishing me… for what? …my transgressions as Slippin’ Jimmy? I’ve been haunted by that moment ever since. ‘A chimpanzee with a machine gun,’ he had called me. I got caught up in my own storytelling, feeling the moments like they were happening right then.

Having set the foundation, I started to tell Taryn about Saul Goodman. Mostly small time money laundering, defending slimy crooks… I watched her reactions carefully. If she couldn’t handle the early years of Saul, then no way I could tell her about the sleazy lawyer that represented Walter White. Just as I was starting to describe some of Saul’s early exploits, a nurse came, took my vitals and announced that I needed to rest.

“I’m sorry, miss,” the nurse said looking at Taryn, “no visitors right now.”

Taryn stood up. I got a better look at her face. I thought I saw her wipe away a tear. “I’ll be down in the cafeteria, baby.” She pecked me on the cheek and then said to the nurse: “Ooh, baby, he’s burning up.”

“I know. That’s why he needs to rest.” The nurse gave me an injection and immediately I felt like I was slipping away. I thought I heard her tell Taryn, “He’ll be out a couple of hours.”

 

When I came to a cop was in my room. I figured it was a fever dream and just closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. “Mr. Dobbs? Mr. Dobbs?” I opened my eyes again. He was still there. My stomach twisted.

“Sir, are you awake?” I fought through the cobwebs of sleepiness and focused my eyes on him. He was young, couldn’t have been more than thirty. My eyes fell to his gun, ominously positioned at the ready on his hip. “Duncan” his name tag said. I was relieved to see that he was holding a notebook and a pen, and not handcuffs. He seemed to be alone.  
“How can I help you, officer?” my voice straining through a haze of drugs. I noticed that he had called me ‘Dobbs’ and I relaxed just a little.

“Sir, you were the victim of a shooting?” he asked politely.

“Well, it was a hunting accident.” 

“I’ll need to record the details. Do you mind if I sit?” He didn’t wait for a reply, sitting down in Taryn’s chair. “Can you describe what happened?”

“It was a couple of days ago in Arizona. My brother, Frank, and I were hunting.”

“Dobbs?”

“What?”

“Your brother, he’s Frank Dobbs?”

“Yes, Dobbs… It was my fault. I got ahead of him somehow and as I was heading back to his position, I appeared from behind a rock. He mistook me for an animal, and wham. Knocked me off my feet…”

“Where in Arizona was this?” He was taking everything down in his note pad.

“Show Low,” I said naming some town I’d passed through before.

“And what do you hunt there?”

“Elk.”

“And rather than get treatment locally, you drove to Iowa?”

“I know it sounds crazy. I didn’t think it was that bad, through and through and all that. I was supposed to be back to work in Minneapolis tonight…”

“And your brother, Frank…”

“He lives in California. He was going to stay on, do some more hunting.”

“Did you report the shooting to local police?”

I shook my head no.

At that moment Taryn came back into the room. She folded her arms and looked confrontationally at the officer. He checked her out. She was wearing a knit sweater with a bold geometric pattern, black slacks and big dangly earrings. “Is this your private nurse?” the cop asked me referring to Taryn.

“I’m Mr. Dobbs’ girlfriend,” she said coming around to the left side of the bed and sitting down at the foot of the bed, where my feet had been moments before.

“Anyway, Mr. Dobbs, whenever there’s a gunshot incident of any kind, it needs to be reported.” I wasn’t paying attention to the officer. Taryn had just described herself as my girlfriend!

“Got ya. That makes sense. My bad on the oversight… I didn’t want to get Frank in trouble.”

“I’m going to need for you to get in touch with the local authorities in Show Low and file a report with them. All right.”

“Sure, sure, Show Low P.D. Will do.”

“Okay, then. You folks have a pleasant day.” The cop left.

I reached my left hand down toward where Taryn was seated on the bed. She embraced my hand and got up and kissed me on the mouth. I pulled her in with my good arm.   
Taryn asked, “how _did_ you get shot?”

“That’d be jumping ahead in the story. But just so we’re aligned: the official story is a hunting accident in Show Low, Arizona.” 

“Well, the suspense is killing me…” Taryn said.

“Walt was my client,” I picked the story back up. “At first I thought he was just a clueless drug dealer; I could make money off of him exploiting his ignorance. I was doing the same things, mostly money laundering, but with Walt the stakes were much higher. Pretty soon I had earned a million dollars.”

I continued to detail the transformation of Saul Goodman. I talked about my relationship with Walt, including the day I met him, how he masqueraded as Badger’s uncle, and how he and Jesse took me out to the desert…

Pretty soon I was involved in criminal conspiracy and profiting from a criminal enterprise, I explained to Taryn. I took a breath and paused from the storytelling. We were holding hands and I squeezed hers. The shoulder was aching. I felt like I was due for the next painkiller, but I didn’t want it. It would knock me too far out to tell the story. 

“Can I get an ice pack?” I asked Taryn. She found the nurse’s assistant and they brought me an ice pack and a cool cloth for my forehead. Taryn held the cloth to my head. She turned it over and then refreshed the water when the cloth became hot. It seemed that she did not loathe me, although I hadn’t gotten to the worst parts. I was sweating but had the chills. Taryn found a blanket and draped it over me. The nurse came with the painkillers, but I waved her off; I needed to be alert. I took a Xanax instead.

“Can I ask you a question?” Taryn said. Her brow was furrowed.

I said “sure” as naturally as I could. Fact was, I was terrified.

“Left to your own devices, who are you: Jimmy, Saul, Paul? Who is most authentically you?”

I went silent. I had no easy answer. The popular response would have been to say Jimmy or Paul or some combination thereof. But Jimmy wasn’t such a saint, and Saul Goodman was equally a part of me. I had fun being Saul. I liked his clothes, his ads, his office and the flippant way he said whatever was on his mind. It had been a creative pursuit to build the persona of Saul, and my relationship to Saul was like Victor Frankenstein’s relationship to his monster. He was my creation and I loved him. He was part me, a shadow version maybe, but me. Though he’d caused me substantial pain, I couldn’t reject him. He was like a needy child.

I told that to Taryn and waited for a response. It was a long time in coming. “Thank you,” she finally said, “that wasn’t the easy answer. It was honest.”

“As Saul,” I said, “I did some things I’m not proud of. Saul had an ethical system but it was warped, guided to an extent by what was best for his client. But first and foremost he, _I_ , was loyal to the dollar.” 

Then I told Taryn about Brock. If she was going to walk, it would be here. It wasn’t lost on me that part of her attraction to me had to do with Daunte. The minute I start talking about poisoning the son of a single mother I figured she’d be out of there. I tried to emphasize my ignorance of Walt’s intent while keeping it truthful.

She listened silently, her lips pursed. She pulled her hand away.

“What did you think was in the cigarettes?” her voice sounded cold.

“I knew it was poison,” I admitted. “But the poison was intended for Gus Fring. Walt told me that Jesse didn’t have the balls to do it himself…”

“And why couldn’t White just ask Jesse for the cigarettes?”

“I know… that was suspicious. My biggest crime as Saul was always that I didn’t want to know. I didn’t ask questions. I wanted plausible deniability. I wanted to be an errand boy for master criminals but preserve a clean conscience. Walt told me that Jesse didn’t want Fring poisoned, he saw him as a mentor of sorts. Walt needed to do it himself, so he needed the ricin back. I thought the poison was for Fring. Walt had other plans. He poisoned a boy… the son of Jesse’s girlfriend.”

There was a long silence. Taryn’s eyes grew wide and I thought she was going to slap me. “I’m going to take a break,” Taryn announced. “You should get some painkillers. You’re pale as those sheets. I’ll get the nurse.”

I woke up about two hours later. There was no sign of Taryn. Her coat and purse were gone. I played back my story in my head—I had been too honest. Who would want anything to do with me? Especially a single mother trying to raise an impressionable teenager. I couldn’t blame her. I waited anxiously, hoping she would return. Every sound in the hallway I thought was her. Every time a hospital worker entered my room my heart leapt, only to be dashed to pieces when I realized it wasn’t her.


	19. Gravity

Saul, Thursday Evening, Day 37  
The painkillers were still coursing through my system. I fought against the encroachment of sleep, nodding off then startling back awake. Sleep was tugging at me and I didn’t have the strength to fend it off. 

When I gave into unconsciousness, I dreamt of Taryn… not good dreams. Just snatches of fever fueled images… Taryn with a red laser beam pointed at her chest, Daunte being poisoned with ricin, Walt laughing, Jesse coming to mete out more revenge… someone grabbing my shoulder and I cried out. I came around slowly. 

“Paul, wake up, sweetie.” _Sweetie?!? Was it her?_ “It’s just a nightmare,” she was saying.

It took me a moment to bring Taryn into focus and to be sure that it was her and not a nurse. “It’s okay now. The nightmare is over.”

_Was it?_ I hoped so. But I worried that Walt had some sort of ‘in the event of my death’ doomsday device set up.

“You came back,” I said, surprised and hopeful. I wanted to embrace her, but I didn’t know if she’d want that. 

“I went to get a cigarette. They don’t sell them in here, heaven knows why…” we both laughed. “I had to go the gas station to get my smokes, and I needed to think, so I decided to go to the lake.”

“And what do you think?” I swallowed hard.

“That’s some pretty deep shit you shared. It’s easy to forgive someone when they have no choices but somehow, sometimes, I think your vision got too narrow. You let things suck you in.”

“That’s fair,” I said.

“You had a lot of raw breaks and that drove your behavior.”

I nodded.

“I have some stories of my own to share,” she said.

_Really?_ “I look forward to hearing them.”

“Let’s not go there just yet.”

“OK… you’re sure?” I wanted to hear about Taryn, but I also wanted be relieved from the burdens of my own confessional.

She nodded.

“OK, then. I bet you’re wondering how I ended up in Minneapolis.”

“That question has crossed my mind…”

I told Taryn about the extractor’s and how Walt abducted me. Her smile faded away and she looked grave.

“I was to go to Omaha,” I said wistfully. Then it occurred to me that I wouldn’t have met Taryn if I was in Nebraska. “But fortunately Ed sent us to Minnesota,” I added with a smile. She smiled back.

I paused for a moment. I just wanted to wipe away the memory of Walt, but I had to tell her everything. “I was like a prisoner. Walt extorted me to keep me compliant.” I was speaking softly, as if I had to be quiet to preserve the secret, to keep it just between Taryn and me. I knew no one else was in the room—I was just being paranoid. “He threatened to hurt people that I cared about.” 

“And who do you care about?” Taryn asked.

“My ex-girlfriend, Kim, and my real brother, Chuck. Walt set Chuck’s house on fire.”

“Oh, my God. What? Why? Is he OK?”

“Yes, he’s all right. I’m not even sure why Walt did it—to show me that he could, I think. He was getting mad at me all of the time. Telling me ‘there will be consequences.’ It was all about his controlling me.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“Yeah, he was a real mindfuck.” We sat in silence for awhile. I was processing all that Walt had done, trying to make sense of his viciousness, but I knew his actions were engineered to be unfathomable. My chest felt tight, and my breathing was shallow. I didn’t want to talk about Walt anymore. I just wanted to bury everything and move on.

Taryn sensed me stalling out. “Why did he kidnap you?” she asked.

“He needed help; he had to stay deep under cover because he was so high profile with the cops—he couldn’t even go outside. He wanted legal advice and I think he wanted companionship. He was a lonely, pathetic man dying of lung cancer.” Then I said in a low voice barely above a whisper, “He poisoned me with arsenic, Taryn.”

“Oh my God. Is that why you were so sick?”

I nodded, trying to tamp down the anger. And the hurt.

“His way of controlling you?” she asked. 

I nodded.

I inhaled deeply. “And…and then he thought I was poisoning him. I wasn’t… I mean, I thought about it… but I didn’t. He punished me for it anyway. He…”

“Go on, sweetie.”

“He thought I had poisoned his chemotherapy drugs. He hooked me up to the chemo drip to see whether I’d spiked it.”

“What a sick bastard!”

“That was last Tuesday. That’s why I was so weird on our date. And the fire at Chuck’s, I found out about that on Tuesday, too. I was going crazy, Taryn, I swear I was. You were the best thing that happened to me, but I started to realize that by spending time with you and Daunte, I was putting you at risk, too. I needed to push you away to try to keep you safe. But the only way to stop everything was that Walt needed to die.”

“You couldn’t just call the police?” It was an innocent question, a sensible question for a normal citizen, but one that suggested that she just wasn’t getting the depth of entanglement between Walt’s crimes and mine. I despaired at every joining worlds with Taryn.

I sighed. “I wish I could have. Walt would have turned _me_ in. I couldn’t survive prison.” I laughed nervously and told her about Dan Wachsberger and the shankings of Gus Fring’s crew. “But I’m not… wasn’t… a murderer. I couldn’t just kill the man.” I saw her shoulders drop a little bit in a release of tension. I wanted to give her a massage. “So I was biding my time, trying to survive his craziness.”

“That must have been horrific.”

“It was. The worst thing I’d ever experienced. And he tried to keep me off balance, acting nice part of the time, pushing me toward death the rest of the time. It was crazy-making.” It was exhausting talking about Walt. Unconsciously, I raised my hand to rub at my wounded shoulder.

“No, you have to leave it alone.” Taryn grabbed my left hand. “I’m so sorry that he did that to you. You didn’t deserve that, Paul.”

I looked into her eyes. She was right; a part of me had thought Walt’s brutality somehow karmically justified, but that was bullshit.

“So after the month from hell in White Bear Lake, Walt decides he wants to go back to Albuquerque. He had this crazy revenge plot that he wanted to perpetrate. Plus he wanted to get his money to his wife.”

I told Taryn about the Schwartzes. She actually seemed amused by that story, maybe because the Schwartzes weren’t sympathetic characters (if Walt was to be believed). Or perhaps she liked the sleight of hand, the way we’d extorted them with no more than a laser pointer.

I told her about Walt’s anger towards Jack Welker and his crew. The way they killed Hank and Gomez and stole Walt’s money. 

Dinner arrived. Chicken broth, salad with iceberg lettuce, a chicken breast, red jello. “Do you want anything?” I offered her.

“No, sweetie, you need to eat up. Go ahead, eat.” I started with the soup; it was bland and a liberal application of salt and pepper didn’t help that much. “I’ll get myself something in the cafeteria,” she said.

“Good idea,” I told her, picking at my salad, looking for a piece of lettuce that had some green in it. 

How could I possibly tell her what happened at the compound? A long silence was spreading out between us. I was letting the food distract me from my task.  
“What happened next, Paul?”

I described the machine gun concoction and how we smuggled it into the neo-nazi camp. “That gun was rigged to kill everyone in the clubhouse, with the possible exception of Walt. If he had hit the deck, he should have been safe from the machine gun. So, I changed the odds. I altered the firing angle on the gun, aiming it lower, toward the floor.” 

I paused. This was potentially more damning than the part about Brock. With Brock, I had plausible deniability, I truly didn’t know the consequences of my actions. But the machine gun? That was murder. It didn’t matter that Walt’s gun was going to kill those bastards anyway. _I_ pressed the button. Walt was the proverbial guy who tries to commit suicide by jumping off a building, only to be shot from a window as he falls to the concrete below. And I was the guy who shot him. Guilty as hell.

I was exhausted. I didn’t think I could go on, but I had to tell her about how the gun moved beyond its arc.

“Walt had intended to kill me.”

Taryn put her hand to her mouth. 

“That’s the real reason he wanted me in the back of that truck. He’d told me that the gun would only swivel so far, there was a mechanism to stop it at 45 degrees. But, to my horror, I could see that the gun wasn’t going to stop. Walt had monkeyed with the stopping mechanism. I was able to make some quick adjustments and scramble out of the truck before the gun swung around on me.”

“You were almost killed?” 

I nodded. I couldn’t interpret Taryn’s expression. It was shock definitely. But could it be that I saw some pride there, too? No, probably just wishful thinking. There was a long pause.

“You were an accomplice in killing how many people?” She’d grown cold again.

“Eight neo-nazis plus Walt.”

“Nine people?”

“Yes.”

“What else do you have for me, Paul? Is this the worst of it? Because I definitely can’t handle anymore.” She stood up.

“That’s the worst of it.”

“Is this when you got shot?”

“Yeah, return fire from the clubhouse.”

“What did you expect?” she asked frigidly. She was right, but it was like being stabbed in the gut anyway. I felt betrayed but I knew I didn’t have a right to feel that way. She needed to lash out. I didn’t reply. “I’m going to take a walk,” she said. I had an urge to make a smart-ass comment to break the tension but fortunately I restrained myself.

With Taryn gone I reflected on my confessions. I had been as honest as I knew how to be. Part of me, probably Saul, feared that I had been way too honest, believing that I should have finessed the situation more. But Saul was never any good at the long term. If there was any chance that this relationship would last, I had done the right thing. It was a relief to get through my story, but my anxiety was growing about Taryn’s reaction. I wished I had some whiskey.

While I was waiting for Taryn’s return, a nurse visited me and changed the dressings. “It’s looking pretty good, Paul,” the nurse said, writing notes in the computer terminal. A little while later the charge nurse dropped by.

“Your wounds are healing nicely. We’re looking at a Saturday discharge.”

“Saturday?” I said, disappointed. “I was thinking tomorrow.”

“We have to keep giving you IV antibiotics. You had a nasty infection… you’re still fighting it, obviously,” she said, indicating the blanket that I was wrapped in.  
Taryn came back in an hour or so. She looked drawn and sad. “Looks like you didn’t touch your dinner. Do you want to go to the cafeteria?”she asked. 

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to…”

“And that’s going to stop you? Oh, please.”

“OK,” I said “They said I should do some walking around.”

“Good… ‘cause I’m starving up in here.” She said emphatically. I love it when she talks like that but I fear it’s a sort of defense mechanism to keep discomfort away. 

“Taryn, I can’t thank you enough for coming here to see me. How were you able to get away?” I asked as we walked along the corridor. It was rank with hospital odors.

“When I explained that my boyfriend had been shot, they were pretty sympathetic.”

There she went with the girlfriend/boyfriend talk again.

“And where’s Daunte?” I asked. He was seventeen, old enough to be on his own, but somehow I knew Taryn wasn’t that kind of mother.

She gave me a knowing smile, and said, “he’s with my sister.”

When we got to the cafeteria, we sat down in a secluded corner of the dining area. “Paul,” she started, “you’ve told me some crazy shit. You’ve been abused and hurt many times over by this lunatic. Now you’re sitting here shot… and I’m sorry for my comment about that… That was insensitive… I know you didn’t want to hurt anyone. Actually I know something about that…” she surveyed the tables around us. There was still no one nearby. “I ran with a tough crowd in high school. A couple of us had shitty living arrangements so we all started living together with one of the girl’s mothers. The mother was a crack fiend, didn’t know up from down; four girls shacking up in her living room didn’t seem odd to her. Besides we brought her the crack.”

“You had shitty living arrangements… How so?” I asked.

Now Taryn got very quiet, started picking at her food. I worried what this meant. I reached over and took her free hand.

“My father…” she began. I felt dizzy. “He abused us. Me and my sister.” I dropped my head. I had a million questions, but tried to keep focused on what Taryn needed to tell, not on what I wanted to know.

“I’m so sorry, Taryn.” I got up and embraced her with my good arm. I scooted my chair over to be right next to her. I held her hand and sat with her in the silence. I just sat there until she was ready to go on.

“So that’s what I was doing in the gang. I mean… we weren’t really a gang, just a group of girls that hung out with the boys in the gang. Then one of the girls got raped by her boyfriend. Lakisha was seventeen and he was like thirty. The boys weren’t that sympathetic; they didn’t understand the concept of date rape. We decided… _I_ decided… to reap revenge…” She became silent again. I waited. “I’ve never told anybody any of this…”

“Take your time…”

“We jumped him. Put him in the hospital for a couple of days. We thought we had done a good thing… celebrated. But Lakisha wasn’t happy. She said it would backfire. We thought that was just the brainwashing, but she was right…” Taryn began shaking and soon she was racked with tears. “When he came home from the hospital, he beat her, Paul… he beat her until she was comatose. She’s a vegetable now, up in the old folks home…”

“It’s not your fault, Taryn. You tried to protect your friend… You were, what, seventeen?”

“Yes. Same age as Daunte. That’s why I’m so terrified that he joins a gang or gets involved in some other shit.”

“He’s a good kid…”

“In our neighborhood being a good kid and joining a gang are not mutually exclusive. For a kid concerned with social justice, the gang can seem like the only way to get it. Obviously, that’s completely misguided but these kids get lost…. Daunte needs a strong male role model… that’s a cliche right?”

“But it’s true,” I said.

“Daunte needs a man who’s figured out how to work the system without getting hisself shot or arrested. Can you be that man, Paul?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either,” she agreed.

“I have a lot of experience trying. I know what not to do,” I told her, desperate to stay in the running.

“I know you do, baby.” Her crying had stopped, but her breathing was still ragged. “How’s your shoulder?”

That was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I was about to say that it was OK, but I decided right then that I wouldn’t tell her even the smallest lie. “It’s killing me right now. I should get to some sleep.… But I don’t want to cut this conversation short.”

“I’m worn out too. Let’s get some sleep. All of this will keep,” she said.

“I have a motel room,” I told her. 

As we headed back to my hospital room, I wanted to hold her hand, but I had to push the IV pole with my good arm. Once in the room, I fished out the motel room key for her. “I’m sorry… I left the room a mess.” I tried to think whether I had left anything incriminating lying around—machine guns and such. Then I reminded myself—‘full disclosure, Paul.’ I called myself ‘Paul’ in my own thoughts. That seemed like a good sign. Paul Dobbs, after all, had never committed any crimes, unless you count reckless endangerment.

Saul, Friday Morning, Day 38  
Taryn came by around 8am, just as I was finishing a breakfast of oatmeal, bacon, orange juice and coffee. She was carrying a large shopping bag whose contents I couldn’t fathom.

“Good morning, sweetie,” she said, kissing me on the cheek. I wanted to read victory into that gesture, but I knew it was just the way Taryn treated everyone. 

“You’re looking _good_. Your coloring is much better,” she smiled broadly. I smiled back. “Those antibiotics must be doing their job. How’s your pain?”

“It still hurts, but it’s getting better. I’m not complaining.”

Taryn pulled her chair up so that I could easily see her face.

“Last night I looked some things up on Google. This Heisenberg… Walt/Frank, whatever… he sounds like a very bad man.”

“He was.”

“I think you did us all a favor.”

“When I did what I did, I was thinking about you and Daunte, and Kim and Chuck.”

“There’s not that much about you in the papers… just references to the ‘Heisenberg lawyer’.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t been online in awhile. I had wondered if they were making the link between me and the carnage at the neo-nazi camp. 

“I think you got caught up… started making some bad choices and before you knew it you were in too deep. I can forgive all of that, Paul, but it seems that it was motivated by greed.”

I wanted to protest, talk my way out of it, but I knew she was right. Reluctantly, I agreed with her assessment.

Taryn said, “I’ve been telling myself, there are two questions I have to answer. Can I live with your past? And, secondly, what will the future bring? Am I willing to risk a future with you based on the past?”

“That’s a deep philosophical question: does our past doom our future?” I reflected.

“I think I can accept your past, Paul, though it won’t be easy. But what really scares me is your future. What are your motives? Will history repeat itself?”

Saul would… hell, even Jimmy would… give her a treatise on how ‘no, history will not repeat itself.’ But Paul grew silent, reflective. “I wish I could promise that it won’t. The fact is that I don’t know. I can tell you that most of what I did was motivated by money, that and acceptance. I’m not motivated by money now. I think I’m motivated by love.”

“Is that because you have a truck load of cash sitting in the parking lot at the Motel 6?” Did I tell her about Walt’s cash? …I didn’t remember having done so, but it’s just as well she knew.

“I don’t know. It certainly helps with any financial insecurity, but it’s blood money.”

“I can see you are trying to be honest. I appreciate that.” After a long pause, she reached into the shopping bag. “I brought you something.” She produced a large white bundle, and unfolding it revealed a quilt bursting with colors as vivid as popsicles. Yellow faded into orange became red morphed into purple which reached into green. Black shapes created the off-set bringing a pattern into relief.

“This is a shoo-fly symbol,” she said. “The myth goes that it was used on the Underground Railroad to mean that a person could be trusted to help the run-aways. See this larger square here, that’s called a block.”

She pointed out the pattern: a square with right angle triangles emanating from each of its corners. I studied the quilt. The colored pieces were an array of fabric choices. Moon bursts and sun bursts; flowers blooming, bending, and twisting; paisley shapes dancing; camouflage; moonscapes; marbleized textures; freckles and dots. It looked like she had raided Saul’s closet. 

“Did you make this?”

She nodded.

“This is phenomenal, thank you! You brought me my escape route,” I said, my voice laden with emotion. I kept staring at the quilt. My breath hitched and a feeling of warmth passed through me. Taryn had an ability to connect with something deep inside me that perhaps had never been touched. “Are you my shoo-fly?”

Again she nodded.

“Look, Taryn, I care about you deeply. I’m not going to say ‘I love you,’ because we don’t know each other that well yet. But I know my feelings are going to grow as we get to know each other. I want to be with you. I hope the same is true for you.”

“Oh, trust me, if I didn’t care for you—more than I think is sane—I would have been out of here long ago. You’ve snagged me—I think you know that.”  
I didn’t know it. Hell, I wasn’t even sure what she meant by ‘snagged me,’ but it sounded like a good thing. I pretended to understand: “did I snag you hard enough that you’d be willing to take a chance on a future with me?”

She smiled so that her dimples became visible. Her eyes sparkled. “You know I wouldn’t keep coming back to this stuffy-ass hospital room of yours if you hadn’t.”

“OK.” I said. “I take it back. I think I do love you.” She embraced me on my good side and we shared a long, hard kiss.


End file.
